DUKE 
UNIVERSITY 


LIBRARY 


Bassar Semi-Centennial Series 


ELIZABETHAN TRANSLATIONS FROM THE ITAL= 
IAN. By Mary Auausta Scott, Ph.D. (A.B. Vas- 
sar, 1876), Professor of English Literature in Smith 
College. 

SOCIAL STUDIES IN ENGLISH LITERATURE. 
By Laura J. Wy.tg, Ph.D. (A.B. Vassar, 1877), Pro- 
fessor of English in Vassar College. 

THE LEARNED LADY IN THE EIGHTEENTH 
CENTURY. By Myra Reyno_ps, Ph.D. (A.B. Vas- 
sar, 1880), Professor of English Literature in Chicago 
University. [lx preparation.] 

THE CUSTOM OF DRAMATIC ENTERTAINMENT IN 
SHAKESPEARE’S PLAYS. By Ore J. HatcuHER, 
Ph.D. (A.B. Vassar, 1888), Formerly Associate Pro- 
fessor of Comparative Literature in Bryn Mawr Col- 
lege. [Jn preparation.) 

INTRODUCTION TO THE STUDY OF VARIABLE 
STARS. By Caro.tne E. Furngss, Ph.D. (A.B. Vas- 
sar, 1891), Professor of Astronomy in Vassar College. 

MOVEMENT AND MENTAL IMAGERY. By Mar- 
GARET FLoy WasHBuRN, Ph.D. (A.B. Vassar, 1891), 
Professor of Psychology in Vassar College. 

BRISSOT DE WARVILLE: A STUDY IN THE HIS- 
TORY OF THE FRENCH REVOLUTION. By Exotsz 
E.very, Ph.D. (A.B. Vassar, 1897), Associate Profes- 
sor of History in Vassar College. 


HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY 
Boston AND New York 


THE LEARNED LADY IN ENGLAND 
. 1650-1760 


oF Ra. Y, lun Anne A Ce | 


Ct Me neg ay a z | 
7 ( : ie wet ancient oneal fen a7 


LADY JANE GREY 


From an engraving in Edmund Lodge’s Portraits of Illustrious Personages of Great Britain 
London, 1823, Vol. IL 


Bassar Semi-Centennial Series 


THE LEARNED LADY 
IN ENGLAND 
1650-1760 


BY 
MYRA REYNOLDS 


Professor of English Literature in the University of Chicago 


WITH PORTRAITS 


BOSTON AND NEW YORK 
HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY 
Che Vitergite Presse Cambridge 
1920 


‘ Ae 


fe itd 


) 4 it 
F 
% “2 ~ Ss 
ray 
ae +! a 
apf i 


Bors E 1920, BY MYRA REYNOLDS 4 


ALL RIGHTS: eeeyed | 


ast 


V9;0:T 
R4641 


PUBLISHED IN HONOR OF THE 
FIFTIETH ANNIVERSARY 
OF THE 
FOUNDING OF VASSAR COLLEGE 
1865-1915 


3'76595 


TO 
E. EH. L. 


3'76595 


CONTENTS 


I. Learnep LapIEs In ENGLAND BEFORE 1650 1 
1. Prefatory Statement : 1 
2. Period of Henry VIII and Elizabeth 4 
8. Period from 1603 to 1650 ‘ ; P . 23 
4. Schools for Girls before 1660 37 
II, Learnep Lapies In ENGLAND FROM 1650 To 1760 46 
1. An Introductory Group in the Years 1650- 
1675 : 4 0 . 46 
2. The Century follaniae ite Reaicrarioss : 81 
Actresses e A F : 81 
Artists 3 . i A ‘ aN a SAD 
Authors ‘ : ; a) BBs 
Writers on Practical edicts : ; . 89 
Writers on Religion and Theology 92 
Writers on Practical Beneficence 118 
Dramatic Writers 127 
General Learning and psc Work 137 
III. Epucation i 3 5 258 
1. Bet dine Gelinals for Gis 258 
2. Charity Schools ‘ : Z : “ . 268 
3. Higher Education . Fs : Q71 
IV. Misce~tuaNnrous Books on WoMEN IN SOCIAL AND 
INTELLECTUAL LIFE . . $16 — 
V. Satiric REPRESENTATIONS OF THE LEARNED Lapy 
In CoMEDY . f ‘ s A 372 
SUMMARY F F E é . - 420 
BIBLIOGRAPHY . : : “ 5 é . 457 
INDEX . A ‘ A x ‘ y ; . 477 


* 
ol 
Hy 
‘ ‘ 
Ps 
‘ 4 
t . 
ht 
ie 
; ‘ : 
i" ; 
ee 


ILLUSTRATIONS 


Lapy JANEGREY .. : ‘ : . Frontispiece 
Tue Faminy or Sir THomas More y s : - 10 
Mary Sipney, Countess OF PEMBROKE . i , LED 


ANNE CLIFFORD, CountTEss OF DorsET, PEMBROKE, AND 


MontTGoMERY . ‘ k f : ; i Br 2. 
Mary Warp . a A ‘ ‘ y : , Mylo! 
Marcaret CavenpisH, Ducuess or NEWCASTLE . . 46 

From Horace Walpole’s Royal and Noble Authors 
Marcaret Cavenpisy, Ducuess or NEWCASTLE . aoe 


From The Lives of William Cavendish, Duke of Newcastle, and of his 
Wife, Margaret, Duchess of Newcastle 


Mrs. KatHErine Pairs : P ‘ ; abe 
Mrs. Lucy HutcHINSON AND HER SON . : : gn) 
Lapy FansHAWE . : : : ; : : aa 
Mrs. ANNE KiLLIGREW . : d A ; . 86 
Mrs. Arora BEHN : : : ; : : . 130 
ELizABETH ELSTOB : : : ‘ : : . 170 


Tur Suprosep Epirors or Jaz Frevate SPECTATOR, BY 
Mrs. Exiza Haywoop : if 3 i . 216 


Miss Evmaseta CARTER i 4 ; p a - 256 
Mrs. Batusua Maxin . : i 2 3 ; . 276 


THE LEARNED LADY IN ENGLAND 


CHAPTER I 
LEARNED LADIES IN ENGLAND BEFORE 1650 


1. Preratory STATEMENT 


Tue theme to which this volume is specifically limited is 
the position and achievements of learned women in England 
in the period between 1650 and 1760. But before entermg upon 
this detailed study it seems desirable to give a preliminary 
sketch of the work of learned women in England before 1650. 
In such a sketch it is, indeed, a temptation to go farther back 
along the path of history than a single volume would allow. 
It is difficult, for instance, to avoid some account of the women 
of genius notable in the great days of Greece and Rome.! More 
fascinating still would be a close study of the learned nuns of 
the Middle Ages.? St. Radegunde, Abbess of Poitiers, a poet 
of considerable distinction; St. Hilda, who governed her double 
monastery at Whitby so successfully as to put it “in the fore- 
front of intellectual agencies in Great Britain”; the group of 
learned nuns who corresponded with St. Boniface, chief among 
them being St. Lioba, who made of her convent at Bischops- 
heim, Germany, “the most important educational center in 
that part of Europe”; Hroswitha of Gandersheim, whose 
seven dramas “caused the tragic muse to emerge once more 
from the midnight gloom of the Middle Ages”’;* St. Hildegard, 
“the most voluminous woman writer of the Middle Ages’”’; 
St. Herrad, author of an encyclopedic work entitled Hortus 
Deliciarum, or Garden of Delight — these are but a few of the 


1 Mozans, H. J.: Woman in Science. Chapter, “Woman's Long Struggle.” 

2 For the work of these nuns see Mozans: Woman in Science; Eckenstein, 
Lina: Woman under Monasticism. 

3 For Hroswitha’s plays see Forinightly Review, March, 1896, pp. 443-50; 
The English Historical Review, July, 1888. 


2 THE LEARNED LADY 


women whose lives and works offer a field for profitable and 
interesting investigation. 

Emily James Putnam, in her acute study, The Lady, says 
of this convent life: 


_ No institution of Europe has ever won for the lady the freedom and 
development that she enjoyed in the convent in the early days. The 
modern colleges for women only feebly reproduce it, since the college 
for women has arisen when colleges in general are under a cloud. 
The lady-abbess, on the other hand, was part of the two great social 
forces of her time, feudalism and the Church. Great spiritual re- 
wards and great worldly prizes were alike within her grasp. She was 
treated as an equal by men of her time as is witnessed by letters we 
still have from popes and emperors to abbesses. She had the stimu- 
lus of competition with men in executive capacity, in scholarship, and 
in artistic production, since her work was freely set before the general 
public: but she was relieved by the circumstances of her environment 
from the ceaseless competition in common life of woman with woman 
for the favor of the individual man. In the cloister of the great days, 
as on a small scale in the college for women to-day, women were 
judged by each other as men are everywhere judged by each other, 
for sterling qualities of head and heart and character. 


From medieval poems and romances also come glimpses, 
tantalizingly brief and casual, to be sure, yet glimpses indica- 
tive of a tendency to count learning as one of the possible 
charms of a heroine.? The delightful lady in Cursor Mundi, 
who was described as “learnyd, ware and wise,” was also said 
to be “of much price lovéd.” A later maid, likewise of “grete 
prys,” could vie with a modern college girl in the variety and 
extent of her knowledge: 

Wyse sche was and curtes of mowthe, 
All the vii arse sche cowthe. 

She had maystures at hur honde, 
The wysest men of that londe, 

And taght hur astronomye, 
Arsmetryck and gemetrye. 

That mayde was of grete prys 

For sche was bothe warre and wyse.? 


1 Putnam, Emily James: The Lady, p. 71. 
2 I am indebted to Miss Emma Pope for the following citations. 
3 Guy of Warwick, E.E.T.S., vol. 25, ll. 63 ff. 


IN ENGLAND BEFORE 1650 3 


In Floris and Blanchefleur, Floris refused to study unless 
Blanchefleur was taught with him, and she prospered so at 
her books that her lore was a wonder to all. When she and 
Floris had been in school five years together, they knew Latin 
and could write well on parchment. When Floris went to visit 
his aunt she set him to learn many things, as other children 
did, “bot maydons and grome.”! The wife of Sir Bevis of 
Hamtoun was taught “fysik and sirgerie” by great masters 
from Bologna.” Melior, the fair mistress of Partonope of Blois, 
since she was the only heir to the kingdom, was sent to school 
that she might get great wisdom. She says, “A hundred mas- 
tres I had and mo,” and adds that God graciously inclined her 
to learning so that she came to know “the seven sciences” 
perfectly. She was also trained in herbs and “phisike,” in 
“Divinite and Nygromancy.” ? Thaise, in Apollonius of Tyre, 
combined the “wisdom of a clerk” with ,. 

every lusti werk, 
Which to a gentlewoman longeth. 


She was wel kept, sche was wel loked 
Sche was wel tawht, sche was wel boked 
So wel sche spedde hir in hire yowthe 
That sche of every wisdom cowthe.* 


Medea, in Lydgate’s Troy Book, had so passionate a desire for 
knowledge that she became in all the “artis called liberal” as 
expert and knowing as the pests She was powerful in logic, 
astronomy, and necromancy.® 
But the highly prized ladies of romance, the py eSeh with 

all their pomp and influence, the women poets, philosophers, 
and orators of Greece and Rome, all lose interest when com- 
pared with the story of the learned women in Italy during the 
Renascence. When we come to the actual flowering time of 

1 Floris and Blanchefleur, E.E.T.S., vol. 14, ll. 16 ff. 

2 Sir Bevis of Hamtoun, E.E.T.S., vols. 46-48, J. 3671 ff. 

3 Partonope of Blois, E.E.T.S., vol. 109, ll. 5912 ff. 


4 Gower: Confessio Amantis, E.E.T.S., vol. 82 (part 2), ll. 1327 ff. 
5 Lydgate: Troy Book, bk. 1, ll. 1606 ff. 


4 THE LEARNED LADY 


their genius the list is so long as to make selection difficult. 
“Never in history,” says Mozans, “had they greater freedom 
of action in things of the mind; never were they, except prob- 
ably in the case of the English and German abbesses of the 
Middle Ages, treated with more marked deference and con- 
sideration or fairness; never were their efforts more highly ap- 
preciated or more generously rewarded. ... Everywhere the 
intellectual arena was open to them on the same terms as to 
men. Incapacity and not sex was the only bar to entrance.” ! 
When the great Cardinal Bembo said, “ Little girls should learn 
Latin; it completes their charm,” he was expressing the atti- 
tude of the best Italian scholars towards learning for women. 
Intellectual attamments were not only counted appropriate 
for women, but they were recognized as a distinct added at- 
traction. Every city of importance had women whose renown 
was a source of civic pride. Women not only studied under 
tutors, but they apparently attended classes in the great uni- 
versities, and even occupied important chairs in the most dis- 
tinguished faculties.” 

The outcome of a general investigation along the lines in- 
dicated would doubtless go to prove that in all civilized na- 
tions, in all ages of their progress, there have been individual 
women who by force of native endowment and through some 
favorable conjunction of circumstances, have risen into prom- 
inence in realms not ordinarily open to the women of their 
time, and that there have been various interesting epochs when 
women have responded in fairly large numbers to some ex- 
ceptional intellectual stimulus. 


2. Periop or Henry VIII ann ELizABETH 


The first woman author in the English language is probably 
Juliana Barnes (or Berners), whose delight in hunting, hawking, 


1 Mozans: Woman in‘ Science, p. 63. 

2 See Wright, Thomas: Womankind in Western Europe; Mozans: Woman in 
Science; Boulting, William: Woman in Italy; Walsh, Marie Donegan: “A City 
of Learned Women,” The Catholic World, 1902; Lagno, Isadore del: Women of 
Florence, tr. by Mary G. Steegman; Putnam, Emily James: The Lady. 


IN ENGLAND BEFORE 1650 5 


and fishing, along with a surprising amount of technical knowl- 
edge on these subjects, led her to write, in 1481, a book for “the 
gentill men and honest persones”’ whose tastes coincided with 
hers. But this lady was prioress of Sopewell Nunnery and 
comes under the list of learned nuns.! Genuine interest in books 
on the part of women in secular life in England received one of 
its earliest manifestations in the will of the Duchess of Buck- 
ingham who left to her daughter-in-law, Margaret, the Count- 
ess of Richmond,? “a book of English, being a legend of Saints; 
a book of French, called Lucun; another book of French, of the 
Epistles and Gospels; and a Primmer with clasps of silver gilt, 
covered with purple velvet.” This legacy was an important 
recognition of the literary tastes of the Countess of Richmond 
who had, says Ballard, “a fine library stored with Latin, French 
and English books, not collected for ornament, or to make a, 
figure (as is frequently the case) but for use.” The Countess 
knew French and had some knowledge of Latin. She also en- 
tered the field of authorship, publishing before 1509 The mir- 
roure of golde for the sinfull soule, “translated at Parice out 
of Laten into Frenshe . . . and now of late translated out of 
Frenshe into Englishe by the right excellent Princess Mar- 
garet.” This right noble Margaret was likewise a patroness of 
literature and a guardian of learning. She established lecture- 
ships in divinity, maintained scholarships for poor students, 
founded two colleges, and in other ways manifested her inter- 
est in the progress of education. 

The Countess of Richmond as a lover of books, as a transla- 
tor of religious works, and particularly as an intelligent and 
ardent patron of learning, foreshadowed feminine activities of 
a later day. But the learned lady as a recognized factor in 
social life had no real place in England till the time of Henry 
VIII. Renascence ideas concerning the education of women 
came into England from Spain through Catherine, the first 


1 Ballard, George: Memoirs of Several Ladies of Great Britain, p. 5. 
2 Ind., pp. 9-27; Watson, Foster: Vives and the Renascence Education of 
Women, pp. 2-3. New and General Biographical Dictionary. 


6 THE LEARNED LADY 


wife of Henry VIII. She was in England from 1501 to 1531. 
Under the influence of her mother, Queen Isabella,! she had 
been given remarkable educational advantages. Queen Isa- 
bella was interested in all that pertained to learning. She was 
a collector of books and contributed important accessions to 
Spanish libraries. She knew several modern languages and had a 
“ critically accurate” knowledge of Latin. Learning for women 
was encouraged at her court. The queen had herself a lady 
teacher, Beatrix Galindo, who was professor of rhetoric at the 
University of Salamanca, and who was called, for her knowl- 
edge of the Latin language, La Latina. Other learned ladies of 
Spain were doubtless known at the court, as Francisca de 
Lebrixa who often took the place of her father, professor of 
history in the University of Alcala; or Dofia Maria Pacheco 
de Mendoza and her sister, who are mentioned by Mr. Foster 
as the parallels of Sir Thomas More’s daughters in England.? 
In this eager, ambitious, intellectual atmosphere the daughters 
of Isabella were brought up. She gave them personal instruc- 
tion, and secured for them foreign teachers of eminence. Eras- 
mus said that Catherine had been happily reared on letters 
from her infancy, that she loved literature, and that she was 
egregie docta. In the English court Queen Catherine’s influence 
was all on the side of learning. Mr. Watson says that all the 
treatises on the education of women that appeared in England 
between 1523 and 1538 were under the spell of Catherine.* In 
the education of her own daughter, the Princess Mary, she kept 
to the traditions of the Spanish court and secured the most 
learned tutors for the young girl. Dr. Lynacre wrote for the 
child Princess a Rudiments of Grammar. His successor was 
Juan Luis Vives, who came to England in 1523 on the invita- 
tion of Henry VIII. Whether Vives actually taught the Prin- 

1 Mozans: Woman in Science, p. 68; Watson, Vives and the Renascence Edu- 
cation of Women, pp. 6-8; Prescott, W. H.: History of the Reign of Ferdinand 
and Isabella, vol. 1, pp. 93-194, passim. 

2 Watson, Foster: Vives and the Renascence Education of Women, p. 7. 


3 Ibid., p. 11. Mr. Watson gives a full analysis of the treatises appearing 
between these dates, 


IN ENGLAND BEFORE 1650 7 


cess or not, he wrote, in 1523, as director of her studies, two 
Latin treatises, both dedicated to Queen Catherine. The first 
of these, De Institutione Femine Christianne, was translated 
_into English by Richard Hyrde before 1528 (though not 
printed till 1540) under the title, The Instruction of a Christian 
Woman. Hyrde dedicated his translation to Catherine because 
of her gracious zeal “‘to the virtuous education of the woman- 
kind of this realm.” Vives’s second treatise, De Ratione Studii, 
an account of the studies appropriate for a young girl, appeared 
in 1524, and many editions are listed. Still another treatise is 
by subject-matter and chronology closely connected with the 
two essays by Vives. In 1524 there appeared a translation by 
Margaret Roper of Erasmus’s Treatise on the Lord’s Prayer. 
The Introduction was by Mr. Hyrde, and its importance is 
indicated by Mr. Watson when he calls it “the first reasoned 
claim of the Renascence period, written in English, for the 
higher education of women.” These treatises by Vives -and 
Hyrde have much in common and they express the most ad- 
vanced contemporary ideas on woman’s education. That the 
place of woman is in the home is emphatically stated. House- 
wifery is imperative. Vives has a charming passage on the han- 
dling of wool and flax, “two crafts yet left of that old innocent 
world,” crafts of which no woman, be she princess or queen, 
may be rightly ignorant.t. Almost equal in quaint interest is 
his defense of the kitchen: “Nor let nobody loathe the name 
of the kitchen: namely, being a thing very necessary, without 
the which neither sick folks can amend nor whole folks live.” 
The lady should also be mistress of a closet of medicaments 
which she must be able to administer with skill. Occupations 
that involve any sort of publicity are counted inappropriate for 
women, hence Vives gives “no license to a woman to be a 
teacher.” ? The essential feminine virtues are piety and mod- 
esty. Obedience to parents and to husbands is enjoined. This 
obedience, if born of inner concord, might be a voluntary and 


1 Watson, Foster: Vives and the Renascence Education of Women, p. 43. 
2 Ibid., p. 56. 


8 THE LEARNED LADY 


ideal thing. The mother of Vives is given as an example of the 
true wifely attitude: “My mother Blanche when she had been 
fifteen years married unto my father, I could never see her 
strive with my father. There were two sayings that she had 
ever in her mouth as proverbs. When she would say she believed 
well anything, then she used to say, even as though Luis Vives 
had spoken it. When she would say that she would [wished] 
anything, she used to say, even as though Luis Vives would 
it.”! In all these points Vives and Hyrde were quite in accord 
with their age. The new element in their creed was that learn- 
ing could make women more attractive, companionable, and 
efficient in these home relationships.? Hyrde considers the man 
that “had leaver have his wife a fool than a wise woman” as 
“worse than twice frantic.” Maids must be good, says Vives, 
but learning will fortify them and make them more truly 
good. In fact, according to Vives and Hyrde, there are no 
bounds to be set to the learning of women except those in- 
volved in the one general prescription that all their studies 
must tend to the development of character. Romances, for 
instance, are forbidden because they give false ideals, while 
ethical and religious books are strongly commended. ® 

The Princess Mary was too young to know the significance 
of the essays in her behalf, but she profited by the training ac- 
corded her. When she was but nine she was addressed by com- 
missioners from Holland in the Latin tongue and responded in 

- the same language “with as much assurance and facility as if 

she had been twelve years of age.”’ * Her parents were proud of 
her achievements and planned to have her learn modern lan- 
guages. Later in life, at the solicitation of Queen Catherine 
Parr, she translated Erasmus’s Paraphrase on the Gospel of St. 
John, and her work was highly praised. 

1 Watson, Foster: Vives and the Renascence Education of Women, p. 117. 

2 [bid., pp. 166-68. Margaret Roper is given as an illustration of the bene- 
ficial effects of learning. 

3 Ibid., pp. 57-63, ‘‘What Books to be Read and What Not.” See also pp. 


203-06. 
4 Encyclopedia Britannica (11th ed.), under “Princess Mary.” 


IN ENGLAND BEFORE 1650 9 


The example set at court was followed in many noble fami- 
lies. There is in the realm of education no single picture more 
entertaining and attractive than that of Sir Thomas More and 
_ his daughters. Our knowledge of this family comes from various 
sources, the chief of which are a description written by Erasmus 
in a letter to John Faber, and the letters written by Sir Thomas 
to the tutors and to his daughters, especially to his daughter 
Margaret.'! Sir Thomas could not see why learning was not as 
suitable for girls as for boys. In a letter to Gunnel he wrote: 


Neither is there anie difference in harvest time, whether it was 
man or woman, that sowed first the corne: for both of them beare 
name of a reasonable creature equally, whose nature reason only 
doth distinguish from bruite beastes, and therefore I do not see why 
learning in like manner may not equally agree with both sexes; for 
by it, reason is cultivated, and (as a fielde) sowed with wholesome pre- 
cepts, it bringeth excellent fruit. But if the soyle of woman’s braine 
be of its own nature bad, and apter to beare fearne then corne (by 
which saying manie doe terrifye women from learning) I am of opinion 
therefore that a woman’s witt is the more diligently by good instruc- 
tions and learning to be manured, to the ende, the defect of nature 
may be redressed by industrie.? 


In describing the ideal wife he said: “May she be learned, if 
possible, or at least capable of being made so,” ® and he gave the 
same training to Margaret and her sisters as to his son John. 
The fame of these daughters went far. Symon Grinzus, in 
dedicating his Plato to John, speaks of the young man’s sisters 
as those “whom a divine heat of the spirit, to the admiration 
and a new example of this our age, hath driven into the sea 
of learning so far, and so happily, that they see no learning to 
be above their reach, no disputation of philosophy above their 


1 See More, Cresacre: The Life of Sir Thomas More, first published about 
1631, and edited by Reverend Joseph Hunter, 1828; Watson, Foster: Vives 
and the Renascence Education of Women, chap. v, “The School of Sir Thomas 
More”; Ballard, Memoirs, pp. 38-61; Manning, Anne: The Household of Sir 
Thomas More; Cannon, Mary Agnes: Education of Women during the Re- 
naissance. 

2 More, Cresacre: The Life of Sir Thomas More (ed. 1726), p. 128. 

3 Ballard: Memoirs, p. 39. 


10 THE LEARNED LADY 


capacity.” ! Margaret, the daughter “most like her father 
both in favour and wit,” and “a rare woman for learning, sane- 
tity, and secrecy,” * was especially the source of his pride. His 
delight in her overflows in his charming response to a letter 
from her asking for money: “You aske monye, deare Megg, 
too shamefully and fearefully of your father, who is both de- 
sirous to giue it you, and your letter hath deserued it, which I 
could find in my heart to recompence, not as Alexander did by 
Cherilus, giuing him for every verse a Philipine of golde; but if 
my abilities were answerable to my will, I would bestowe two 
Crownes of pure golde for euery sillable thereof.” ? He found her 
Latin letters written in so pure a style that “Momus, his cen- 
sure though never so teastie,” could find no fault in them. Sir 
Thomas took occasion to show these letters and other com- 
positions by Margaret to the Bishop of Exeter and to Reginald 
Pole, both good judges of any literary performance; and Mar- 
garet’s attainments seemed to both “as a miracle.” Of Mr. 
Pole’s amazement Sir Thomas wrote: 


I could scarce make him believe, but that you had some help from 
your maister, until I told him seriously that you had not only never 
a maister in your house, but alsa never another man, that needed 
not your help rather in writing anie thing, than you needed his. In 
the mean time I thought with myself how true I found that now, which 
once I remember I spoke unto you in jeaste, when I pittied your hard 
happe, that men that read your writings would suspect you to have 
had help from some other man therein; which would derrogate some- 
what from the praises due to your workes; seeing that you of all 
others deserve least to have such a suspition had of you, for that you 
never could abide to be decked with the plumes of other birds.* 


But sweet Meg is praised because she studies for love of learn- 
ing, not for fame, and contents herself with her husband and 
father as a sufficient audience. When Margaret married the 
best wish her father could make was that her children should 


1 Watson, Foster: Vives and the Renascence Education of Women, p. 187. 
2 Ballard: Memorrs, p. 58. 

3 More, Cresacre: Life of Sir Thomas More (ed. 1726), p. 138. 

¢ Ballard: Memoirs, p.43. ~ 


| ail 


THE FAMILY OF SIR THOMAS MORE 


W. Parsons sculp. 1815 


Hans Holbein pinxit. 
From an engraving in Effigies 


Poeticae, London, 1824, Vol, IE 


i y 
4 
‘ 
y 
~ 
“es 
' 
* 


IN ENGLAND BEFORE 1650 11 


be most like to herself, “except only in sex,” yet he adds that 
a daughter who could imitate her mother’s learning and vir- 
tues would be of more worth than “three boys.” ! 

Margaret had three sons and two daughters and she took the 
same care of their education as had been taken of hers. Dr. 
John Morwen, a noted Greek scholar, was preceptor in Greek 
and Latin to her daughter Mary. Other tutors were Dr. Cole 
and Dr. Christopherson, also famous for Greek. Mary seems to 
have followed in her mother’s footsteps so far as attention to 
learned pursuits is concerned, but without her mother’s ability 
and charm. Her Latin orations were, however, so much ad- 
mired that her tutor, Dr. Morwen, translated them into Eng- 
lish. Sir Thomas More’s other daughters, Elizabeth Dancy 
(b. 1509) and Cecilia Heron (b. 1510), and Margaret, a talented 
kinswoman who married her tutor, Dr. John Clement, in 1531, 
were given the same educational advantages as Margaret. A 
characteristic eulogy of the three sisters was by Mr. John 
Leland, its Latin being thus Englished in Ballard’s Memoirs: 


Forbear too much t’ extoll, great Rome, from hence, 
Thy fam’d Hortensius’ Daughter’s Eloquence; 
These boasted names are now eclips’d by Three 
More learned Nymphs, Great More’s fair Progeny; 
Who over-pas’d the Spinster’s mean Employ; 

The purest Latin Authors were their Joy; 

They loved in Rome’s political Style to write. 

And with the choicest Eloquence indite, 

Nor were they conversant alone in these, 

They turn’d o’er Homer and Demosthenes; 

From Aristotle’s Store of Learning too 

The mystic Art of Reasoning well they drew. 

Then blush you Men if you neglect to trace 

These Heights of Learning which the Female grace. * 


Erasmus and Sir Thomas More were close friends and it was 
through this friendship that Erasmus was converted to the idea 
of advanced studies for women. In his The Abbot and the 


1 More, Cresacre: The Life of Sir Thomas More (ed. 1726), p. 141. 
2 Ballard: Memoirs, p. 49. 


12 THE LEARNED LADY 


Learned Woman, Magdalia defends learning against the Abbot 
Antronius. The monk uses the well-worn argument that wom- 
an’s place is in the home, that it is her business to conduct the 
affairs of the family and to instruct the children. Magdalia does 
not contest this position, but urges that so weighty a business 
needs all possible wisdom and that through books she gains 
wisdom. In a sharp attack on the ignorance of the monks she 
says: “In Spain and Italy there are not a few women belonging 
to the noblest families who are a match for any man. In Eng- 
land there are the Mores; in Germany the Pirckheimers and 
the Blaurers. And if you don’t take care, it will soon come to 
this, that we shall preside in the schools of divinity, preach 
in the churches, and take possession of your mitres.... If you 
go on as you are doing it is more likely that the geese will begin 
to preach than that such dumb shepherds as you will be any 
longer endured.” 1 Antronius is reduced to the weak argument 
that popular opinion does not favor Latin for women, and Mag- 
dalia closes the discussion with the classic defense of new ideas: 
“Why do you tell me of popular opinion, which is the worst 
example in the world to be followed? What have I to do with 
custom, that is the mistress of all evil practices? We ought to 
accustom ourselves to the best things, and by that means that 
which was uncustomary would become habitual, and that which 
was unpleasant would become pleasant, and that which seemed 
unbecoming would look graceful.” ” . 

The daughters of Sir Thomas More were not the only girls 
trained in the best learning of the day. Another important 
family where particular stress was laid on the education of the 
daughters was that of Sir Anthony Coke, one of the tutors of 
King Edward VI.? Mildred, the eldest daughter (1526-1589), 
who married Lord Burleigh, was celebrated for her knowledge 
of Latin and Greek. Two other daughters, Elizabeth, Lady 


1 Drummond, Robert B.: Erasmus, His Life and Character, vol. 11, p. 168. 

2 Erasmus: Select Colloquies (edited by Merrick Whitcomb), p. 179. 

3 Ballard (Memoirs, pp. 180-210) gives full account of the daughters of Sir 
Anthony Coke; see also, Williams, Jane: Literary Women of England; Chalmers, 
Alexander: Gen. Biog. Dict. (ed. 1812), vol. 10. 


IN ENGLAND BEFORE 1650 13 


Russel (b. cir. 1529), and Katharine, Mrs. Killigrew (b. cir. 1530), 
had fine natural abilities and a learned education, and were dis- 
tinguished both socially and intellectually. But the most noted 
of the sisters was Anne (b. cir. 1527), who married Sir Nicholas 
Bacon, and became the mother of two remarkable sons, An- 
thony Bacon, and Francis Viscount St. Albans, the great Lord 
Bacon. She was said to be “exquisitely skilled in the Greek, 
Latin, and Italian tongues.” In 1550 she translated twenty- 
five sermons from the Italian. In later life she did a much 
more important piece of translation. Bishop Jewel had written 
in Latin An Apology for the Church of England. The book had 
made so great a stir that an English translation seemed desir- 
able and Lady Bacon undertook the task. She sent her trans- 
lation to the Archbishop and to the author, with a letter 
written in Greek, that they might correct any errors, but they 
found it so accurate that they changed not the least word. 
In 1564 the Archbishop had the book published without con- 
sulting Lady Bacon because he said he knew her modesty 
would be abashed by any such publicity. He praised her clear 
translation saying that she “had done honour to her sex and 
to the degree of ladies.” Lady Bacon was associated with her 
father in his duties as tutor to Edward VI. She also conducted 
the early education of her sons and they owed much to her wise 
care and great ability. Sir Anthony Coke believed that women 
should be educated on the same lines as men, and that they 
were quite ascapable of acquiring knowledge, and his own 
daughters brilliantly sustained this theory. 

A third distinguished family in which the daughters were 
liberally educated was that of Edward Seymour, Duke of 
Somerset. Three of them, Anne, Margaret, and Jane, were joint 
authors of A Century of Distichs upon the Death of Queen Mar- 
garet of Navarre, printed in 1550 and later translated into Greek, 
French, and Italian.! Henry Fitz Allan, Earl of Arundel, had 
both his daughters well trained in the classics and they had the 
advantage of the notable library he had collected. The eldest, 

1 Ballard: Memoirs, pp. 138-43. 


14 THE LEARNED LADY 


Lady Joanna Lumley ! (d. 1576), translated four of the Ora- 
tions of Isocrates from Greek into Latin, and the Iphigenia 
of Euripides from Greek into English. Most of her writings 
were dedicated to her.father. Her manuscripts were preserved 
in his library and so passed into royal possession in the time of 
James I. Another learned lady was Mary, Countess of Arundel.” 
She translated from Greek and Latin and collected a book of 
similes from Plato, Aristotle, Seneca, and other classic authors. 
She, too, dedicated her works to her father, Sir Thomas Arun- 
del. Sir Thomas Parr, “following the example of Sir Thomas 
More and other great men,” bestowed on his daughter Cath- 
erine ® a learned education, as “the most valuable addition he 
could make to her other charms.” She was interested in all mat- 
ters pertaining to learning, and successfully used her influence 
with the King in behalf of the universities. She wrote a letter 
in Latin to the Princess Mary to induce her to translate Eras- 
mus’s Paraphrase of St. John, and wrote many psalms, prayers, 
and meditations, beside Queene Katherine Parre’s lamentation 
of a sinner, published in 1548. Jane, Countess of Westmoreland, 
was placed by her father, the Earl of Surrey, under the tuition 
of Mr. Fox, the Martyrologist, who reported her skill in Latin 
and Greek as such “that she might well stand in competition 
with the greatest men of that age.” 4 

Most interesting and most pathetic of all the young women 
known for learning in Tudor times was Lady Jane Grey.® 
Ascham, in a well-known passage in The Scholemaster (1570), 
describes an interview he had with her at Bradgate where she 
was pursuing her studies under John Aylmer, her tutor. This 
was in 1550 when Lady Jane was but thirteen. 


Before I went into Germanie, I came to Brodegate in Le(i)cester- 
shire, to take my leaue of that noble Ladie Zane Grey, to whom I was 
exeding moch beholdinge. Hir parentes, the Duke and Duches, with 
all the houshold, Gentlemen and Gentlewomen, were huntinge in the 


1 Ballard: Memoirs, pp. 121-23. 2 Ibid., p. 120. 
3 Ibid., pp. 79-97. 4 Ibid., p. 145. 
5 Ascham: Scholemaster, bk. 1, no. 7; Ballard: Memoirs, pp. 98-118. 


IN ENGLAND BEFORE 1650 15 


Parke; I founde her, in her Chamber, readinge Phedon Platonis in 
Greeke, and that with as moch delite, as som ientlemen wold read a 
merie tale in Bocase. After salutation, and dewtie done, with som other 
taulke, I asked her, whie she wold leese soch pastime in the Parke! 
smiling she answered me; I wisse, all their sporte in the Parke is but 
a shoadoe to that pleasure, that I find in Plato: Alas good folke, they 
neuer felt what trewe pleasure ment. And howe came you Madame, 
quoth I, to this deepe knowledge of pleasure, and what did chieflie 
allure you vnto it: seinge, not many women, but verie fewe men 
haue attained thereunto. I will tell you, quoth she, and to tell you a 
troth, which perchance ye will meruell at. One of the greatest bene- 
fites, that euer God gaue me, is, that he sent me so sharpe and seuere 
Parentes, and so ientle a scholemaster. For when I am in the pres- 
ence of either father or mother, whether I speake, kepe silence, sit, 
stand, or go, eate, drinke, be merie, or sad, be sowyng, plaiyng, 
dauncing, or doing anie thing els, I most do it, as it were, in soch 
weight, mesure, and number, euen so perfitelie, as God made the world, 
or else I am so sharplie taunted, so cruellie threatened, yea presentlie 
some tymes with pinches, nippes, and bobbes, and other waies, which 
I will not name, for the honor I bear them, so without measure mis- 
ordered, that I think my selfe in hell, till tyme cum, that I must go 
to M. Elmer, who teacheth me so ienilie, so pleasantlie, with soch 
faire allurements to learning, that I thinke all the tyme nothing, 
whiles I am with him. And when I am called from him, I fall on 
weeping because, what soeuer I do els, but learning, is ful of grief, 
trouble, feare, and whole misliking unto me: And thus my booke, 
hath bene so moch my pleasure, and bringeth dayly to me more 
pleasure and more, that in respect of it, all other pleasures, in vere 
deede be but trifles and troubles vnto me. I remember this talke 
gladly, bothe bicause it is so worthy of memorie, and bicause also, 
it was the last talke that euer I had, and the last tyme, that euer I 
saw that noble and worthie Ladie. 


Mr. Elmer said she understood perfectly both kinds of phi- 
losophy, and could express herself very properly at least in the 
Latin and Greek tongues. Sir Thomas Chaloner said that she 
was “well versed in Hebrew, Chaldee, Arabic, French and 
Italian,” that she “played well on instrumental music, writ 
a curious hand, and was excellent at her Needle.” Ballard 
quotes a contemporaneous opinion that she was superior to 
King Edward VI in learning and in the languages. “If her 
fortunes [says he] had been as good as her bringing up, joyned 


16 THE LEARNED LADY 


with fineness of wit: undoubtedly she might have seemed com- 
parable not only to the house of the Vespasians, Sempronians, 
and mother of the Gracchies; yea, to any other women besides 
that deserveth high praise for their singular learning; but also 
to the university men, which have taken many degrees of the 
Schools.” 

So far as accessible records go it was only in royal or noble 
families that a learned education was counted suitable for 
women. It is rare indeed to come upon an account like that 
of Elizabeth Lucar (1510-1537), the daughter of a Mr. Paul 
Withypoll, and the wife of a merchant-tailor, Mr. Lucar. In 
her accomplishments she seems to have vied with the best ladies 
in the land. She was excellent in music, being able to play on 
the viol, the lute, and the virginal, and she could sing in various 
tongues. 


She wrought all Needle-works that Women exercise, 
With Pen, Frame, or Stoole, all Pictures artificial, 
Curious Knots, or Trailes, what fancy could devise, 
Beasts, Birds, or Flowers, even as things natural. 


She wrote “three manner hands,” was especially cunning in ac- 
counts and “Algorism” (Arithmetic), and she could speak, 
write, and read Latin, Spanish, and Italian, and she “won the 
garland” in English.! Our knowledge of Elizabeth Withypoll’s 
rare attainments comes by chance from the information on her 
monument. Probably there were other highly educated women 
in the wealthy middle classes but their learned tastes were not 
counted worthy of any definite record. 

In addition to the many instances of girls trained in the best 
learning of their times during the first half of the sixteenth cen- 
tury, we have striking contemporary testimony as to the prev- 
alence of the custom, and the high esteem in which such learning . 
was held. Richard Mulcaster (1530-1611), first head-master 
of a school founded by the Merchant Taylors’ Company in 1561, 
in discussing principles of education, expressed advanced ideas 


1 Ballard: Memorrs, p. 36. 


IN ENGLAND BEFORE 1650 17 


concerning the ability and training of girls... He declared him- 
self “for them toothe and naile.” He says that their “natural 
towardnesse”’ is such that they should be well brought up, and 
he summarizes the elements of this training. A young gentle- 
woman is thoroughly educated, he says, if she can “reade plainly, 
and distinctly, write faire and swiftly, sing cleare and sweetly, 
play wel and finely, understand and speak the learned languages, 
and the tongues also which the time most embraseth with some 
logicall helpe to chop, and some rhetoricke to brave.” And he 
asks whether it is likely that the children of a woman so trained 
will be “eare a whit the worse brought up” for this learning. 
The places wherein girls may study may be at home with tu- 
tors or they may go forth to the elementary school. And the 
teacher may be either a man or a woman. Mulcaster was him- 
self in favor of sending girls to the public grammar schools, 
and even to the universities, but he said it was “a thing not 
used” in his country, there was no “president” therefor. But 
he is enthusiastic about the attainments of women. In lan- 
guages, he says, “they compare favourably with our kinde in 
the best degree.” Some of them are so excellently trained and 
so rarely qualified that they could be preferred to “the best 
Romaine or Greekish paragones be they never so much 
praised: to the Germaine or French gentlewymen by late writ- 
ers so wel liked: to the Italian ladies who dare write themselves 
and deserve fame for so doing.” 

Nicholas Udall, in 1548, in a Preface to Princess Mary’s 
translation of the Paraphrase of the Gospel of St. John by Eras- 
mus, comments on the great number of noble women at that 
time in England given not only to human sciences and strange 
tongues, but 
also so throughly expert in the Holy Scriptures that they were able 
to compare with the best writers as well in enditeing and penning of 
Godly and fruitful treatises to the instruction and edifying of realmes 
in the knowledge of God, as also in translating good books out of Latin 
or Greek into English. . . . It was now no news in England to see young 


1 Mulcaster, Richard: Positions, chap. 38. 


18 THE LEARNED LADY 


damsels in noble houses and in the courts of princes, instead of cards 
and other instruments of idle trifling, to have continually in their 
hands either psalms, homilies, or other devout meditations . . . and as 
familiarly both to read or reason thereof in Greek, Latin, French or 
Italian, as in English. It was now a common thing to see young virgins 
so trained in the study of good letters, that they willingly set all other 
vain pastimes at naught for learning sake. It was now no news at all, 
to see Queens and ladies of most high estate and progeny, instead of 
courtly dalliance, to embrace virtuous exercises of reading and writ- 
ing, and with most earnest study both early and late, to apply them- 
selves to the acquiring of knowledge.! 


Puttenham, in his Arte of English Poesie (1589), indicates 
the prevalence of women poets in the sixteenth century when 
he says: 

Darke word or doubtfull speach are not so narrowly to be looked 
vpon in a large poeme, nor specially in the pretie Poesies and deuises 
of Ladies and Gentlewomen-makers, whom we would not haue too 
precise Poets least with their shrewd wits, when they were maried 
they might become a little too fantasticall wiues.? 


One of the influential foreign books of the first half of the 
sixteenth century was Baldasar Castiglione’s Il Cortegiano, 
written in 1514, published in 1528, and translated into English 
in 1561 by Thomas Hoby. The book is a conversation sup- 
posed to take place in the drawing-room of the Duchess of 
Urbino, with the Duchess, her friend Emilia Pia, Pietro Bembo, 
Bernardo Bibbiena, Giuliano de Medici, and others, among the 
speakers. In the chapter on the attributes of the perfect Court 
Lady, Count Gaspar Pallavicino says, “Since you have given 
women letters and continence and magnanimity and temper- 
ance I only marvel that you would not have them govern cities, 
make laws, and lead armies, and let the men stay at home to 
cook or spin.” ? Giuliano de Medici replies, laughing, “Perhaps 
even that would not be amiss.” There follows a discussion of 
woman as essentially imperfect, an accident or mistake of na- 

1 Ballard: Memoirs, p. 197. 


2 Puttenham, George: The Arte of English Poesie, lib. m1, chap. XxI. 
3 Translation of Cortegiano by L. E. Opdyke (1903), bk. m1, p. 172. 


IN ENGLAND BEFORE 1650 19 


ture, and consequently of less dignity than men and not capable 
of those virtues to which men attain. But the Magnifico held 
the doctrine that physical weakness does not constitute inferi- 
ority, and that mentally women are equal to men: “All the 
things that men can understand the same can women under- 
stand too; and where the intellect of the one penetrates there 
also can that of the other penetrate.” 

It is but natural that the praise of learning for women should 
extend through the reign of Elizabeth. The Queen herself was 
an admirable linguist. She spoke and wrote Latin with ease; 
she was a student of Plato, Aristotle, and Xenophon; and she 
made translations into English from French and Italian, even 
translating from Latin into Greek. According to Ascham she 
read more Greek every day than some Prebendaries read Latin 
in a week, and bestowed more regular hours on learning than 
six of the best given gentlemen in the court. It was also in ac- 
cordance with the ideals of the age that the Queen should wish 
to shine as a poetess. Dyce, in his Specimens of British Poetesses, 
says that except for the speech of the Chorus in the Hercules 
Acteus of Seneca (printed in Park’s edition of Walpole’s Royal 
and Noble Authors) he gives, and for the first time in collected 
form, all the poems by this “Flower of Troynovant.”’ It is all 
occasional verse, such as a sonnet on that lovely “daughter of 
debate,” Mary Queen of Scots, a Rebus, an Epitaph, and a few 
other stanzas. One little poem beginning 


I grieve but dare not show my discontent, 


with much that is conventional in expression, seems yet te 
have a genuine note of personal feeling. Taken as a whole the 
brief sum of the Queen’s verse indicates no poetic aptitude. It 
merely goes to show that verse writing was counted an agreeable 
accomplishment, and one to be cultivated by a queen. 

_ Probably the most highly gifted woman during Elizabeth’s 
reign was Jane Weston (1582-1612).! And she was of high re- 
pute. When Evelyn went to dine with Lord Cornbury at Clar- 

1 Ballard: Memoirs, pp. 243-47. 


20 THE LEARNED LADY 


endon House (December 20, 1668) to see the new house “now 
bravely furnished, especially with the pictures of most of our 
ancient and modern wits, poets, philosophers, famous and 
learned Englishmen,” he greatly commended his lordship’s 
collection, but suggested additional names of the learned. 
Among these new names were Lady Jane Grey and Elizabeth 
Jane Weston. In Numismata Evelyn praised Jane Weston’s 
_ Latin poem on typography. Farnaby “ranked her with Sir 

Thomas More and the best Latin poets of the day.” She was 
reputed to speak and write English, Greek, German, Latin, 
Ttalian and Czech. John Philips praised her in his Theatrum 
Poetarum. “Weston’s fair daughter,” “the tenth muse,” “the 
fourth grace,” received, indeed, very high contemporary Eng- 
lish recognition, and even more extravagant praise came from 
foreign critics. Her collected works were published in 1602 by 
Georg Martin von Baldhoven at his own cost. At the end of 
the book there was a list of learned women beginning with 
Deborah and ending with Elizabeth Weston. 

The only woman before 1603 in Aubrey’s Lives, besides the 
Countess of Pembroke, was Elizabeth Danvers. His notes on 
her are: “A great politician; great witt and spirit, but revenge- 
full. Knew how to manage her estate as well as any man; under- 
stood jewells as well as any jeweller.”’ He calls her “an Italian,” 
probably because she understood that language, and he says 
“she had prodigious parts for a woman.” Her learning was 
certainly unusual, for “she had Chaucer at her fingers’ ends.” 
The only date given for her is 1568, the year in which her son, 
Sir Charles Danvers, was born.! 

To show that Scotland was not unrepresented, mention may 
be made of Elizabeth Melville, supposed to be identical with 
Elizabeth Colville, Lady Colville of Culross. In 1599 Alexander 
Hume dedicated to her his Hymns, or Sacred Songs, and he says 
of her: “I know ye delite in poesie yourselfe; and as I vnfainedly 
confes, excelles any of your sexe in that art, that ever I heard 
within this nation. I have seene your compositions so copious, 

1 Aubrey: Brief Lives, vol. 1, p. 193. 


IN ENGLAND BEFORE 1650 21 


so pregnant, so spirituall, that I doubt not but it is the gift of 
God in you.” ! The one poem by which she is known, Ane 
Godlie Dreame compylit in Scottish Meter by M. M. (Mistress 
Melville) Gentlewoman in Culross, at the request of her freindes, 
was published in 1603. It appeared again in a volume of Va- 
rious Poetry in 1644, and in David Laing’s Early Metrical Tales 
in 1826. Dyce gives a few stanzas in his Specimens. The poem 
is a Bunyan-like narrative in which the horrors of hell are 
painted with a vigorous brush. In fact hell is made so distinct 
that even the mitigating and finally saving presence of Christ 
as guide can hardly soften the pictures of “puir damnit saullis 
. . . frying wonder fast in flaming fire.” ? 
The one lady of Elizabethan days whose fame justly exceeds 
that of any of her predecessors is Mary Sidney (1561-1621), 
sister of Sir Philip Sidney. At sixteen she married Henry 
Herbert, Earl of Pembroke, and the twenty-four years of her 
married life were passed at his estate, Wilton House, in Wilt- 
shire. Her brother Philip was often at Wilton and her more 
important literary accomplishments are closely bound up with 
his work. It was at Wilton that he wrote The Countess of Pem- 
broke’s Arcadia which he dedicated to his “dear ladie and sis- 
ter.” The brother and sister translated together the whole 
book of Psalms into English verse. Psalms 44-150 are attributed 
to Lady Pembroke. In 1592 she published two translations 
from the French, Du Plessis Mournay’s Le Excellent Discours 
de la Vie et de la Mort; and Robert Garnier’s Mare Antonie, a 
tragedy. Before 1600 she had also translated The Triumph of 
Death from the Italian. In 1593 she brought out her brother’s 
Arcadia on which she had done most careful editorial work. 
She had also a taste for science. Aubrey, in his Brief Lives, 
says of her: “She was a great chymist, and spent yearly a 


1 Scottish Text Society, 1902, p. 4. 

2 Notes and Queries, 2d Series, vol. vit, pp. 247, 312. 

: 3 Ballard: Memoirs, pp. 259-66; Young, Francis Berkeley: Mary Sidney, 
Countess of Pembroke. (Full and discriminating account of Lady Pembroke 

as patroness and author.) 


22 THE LEARNED LADY 


great deale in that study.! She kept for her laborator in the 
house Adrian Gilbert (vulgarly called Dr. Gilbert), half brother 
to Sir Walter Ralegh, who was a great chymist in those dayes. 
. .. She also gave an honourable pension to Dr. Thomas Mouf- 
fett, who hath writ a booke De insectis. Also one... Boston, 
a good chymist ... who did undoe himself by studying the 
philosopher’s stone.” 

But while Lady Pembroke takes undoubtedly a high rank © 
as translator and editor, her fame does not rest chiefly on this 
work. When Nicholas Breton compared her to the Duchess of 
Urbino he brought forward her essential claim to distinction, 
which is that she understood, valued, and befriended the 
literati of her day. Aubrey says: “In her time Wilton House 
was like a College, there were so many learned and ingeniose 
persons. She was the greatest patronesse of witt and learning 
of any lady in her time.” The most extravagant eulogies were 
addressed to her from girlhood to old age. No such chorus of 
praise had been accorded any other woman except the queen. 
But it must be noted that this adulation is mainly for Lady 
Pembroke as the patroness of letters. Only incidentally are 
her own scholastic attainments commended. It was as a lover 
of wit and learning, as a dispenser of favors, that Lady Pem- 
broke, the typical great lady of Elizabethan days, expressed 
her interest in learning, rather than as herself a scholar; and 
it was as an intelligent and open-handed patroness that she 
received highest recognition. 

Wotton, about a century later, gives the following summary 
of the learning of this period: “It was so very modish, that the 
fair Sex seemed to believe that Greek and Latin added to their 
Charms: and Plato and Aristotle untranslated, were frequent 
ornaments of their Closets. One would think by the Effects, 
that it was a proper Way of Educating of them, since there are 
no Accounts in History of so many truly great Women in any 
one age, as are to be found between the years 15 and 1600.” ? 


1 The only record of Lady Pembroke’s scientific tastes. Aubrey’s testimony 
is, unfortunately, not entirely to be relied on. [Young: Mary Sidney, p. 154.] 
2 Wotton, William: Reflections on Ancient and Modern Learning, p. 349. 


MARY SIDNEY, COUNTESS OF PEMBROKE 
From an engraving in Horace Walpole’s Royal and Noble Authors, London, 1806 


IN ENGLAND BEFORE 1650 23 


Though Wotton counts the century as one period, a closer 
study of dates shows that most of the learned women of the 
century belong in the first half of it, or at least obtained their 
education in the first half of it. The woman most noted for 
classical attainments during Elizabeth’s reign was Lady Bacon. 
Her sisters also were of considerable importance intellectually, 
and they lived well into the reign of Elizabeth. But their edu- 
cation and their establishment as women of exceptional learn- 
ing belong before the coming of Elizabeth to the throne. 

Miss Weston’s learning is unquestioned, but it can hardly be 
credited to England. She lived much abroad, her works were 
published in Holland, and the praise accorded her in England 
was but an echo of the eulogies uttered by foreign.critics. In 
spite of Queen Elizabeth and Lady Mary Sidney, and Lady 
Bacon and Jane Weston, it becomes apparent by a study of 
dates and names that there were in Elizabeth’s reign fewer eu- 
logies of liberal education for girls and fewer records of women 
distinguished by learning than in the preceding period. In 
point of fact, when we speak of the sixteenth century as a cen- 
tury of learned women, the emphasis should be on the first 
sixty years of the century. 


3. PERIOD FROM 1603 To 1650 


With the death of Elizabeth we come practically to the end 
of the favor accorded learned women. The changed tone of 
public opinion may be fairly indicated by a few scattered utter- 
ances from contemporary poems and essays. 

Sir Thomas Overbury, in his Characters (1614), describes “A 
Good Woman” as one “whose husband’s welfare is the busi- 
ness of her actions.” Her chief virtue is that “Shee is Hee.” 
In A Wife he says that “Books are a partof Man’s Preroga- 
tive.” He praises a “passive understanding” in women and 
deprecates learning since : 


What it finds malleable it maketh frail 
And doth not add more ballast, but more sail. 


Powell, in Tom of All Trades (1631), is emphatic in his plea for 


24 THE LEARNED LADY 


the domestic as against the learned lady: “Let them learne 
plaine workes of all kinds, so they take heed of too open seam- 
ing. Instead of Song and Musicke, let them learn Cookerie 
and Laundrie. And instead of reading in Sir Philip Sidney’s 
Arcadia, let them reade the grounds of good huswifery. I 
like not a female Poetresse at any hand.” 1 William Habing- 
ton, in Castara (1634), a series of poems in honor of Lucy Her- 
bert, his wife, gave a comprehensive description of the ideal 
wife’s attitude towards her husband: “Shee is inquisitive onely - 
of new wayes to please him, and her wit sayles by no other com- 
pass then that of his direction. Shee lookes upon him as Con- 
jurers upon the Circle, beyond which there is nothing but 
Death and Hell; and in him shee beleeves Paradice cireum- 
scrib’d. His vertues are her wonder and imitation; and his 
errors, her credulitie thinkes no more frailtie, then makes him 
descend to the title of Man.” 2 Richard Brathwait, in The 
English Gentleman, comments with apparent approval on the 
ancient seclusion of women. He says, “The Aigyptians, by an 
especiall decree (as Plutarch reports) injoined their Women to 
weare no shooes, because they should abide at home. The 
Grecians accustomed to burne, before the doore of the new 
married, the axletree of that coach, wherein she was brought to 
her husbands house, letting her understand that she was ever 
after to dwell there.” ? 

Sir Ralph Verney said of his own daughter: “Pegg is very 
backward. . . . I doubt not but she will be schollar enough for 
a Woeman.” With regard to little Nancy Denton he wrote: 
“Let not your girl learn Latin nor short hand: The difficulty 
of the first may keep her from that vice, for soe I must esteem 
it in a woeman; but the easinesse of the other may be a prej- 
udice to her; for the pride of taking sermon noates hath made 
multitudes of women unfortunate.” Miss Nancy was quite 
in advance of her godfather in her conception of the studies 


1 New Shakspere Society Series, vol. v1, p. 173. 
2 Habington, William: Castara, Preface to “The Second Part.” 
3 Brathwait, Richard: The English Gentleman (ed. 1633), p. 264. 


IN ENGLAND BEFORE 1650 25 


appropriate for her. She wrote to him: “I know you and my 
coussenes wil out rech me in french, but i am a goeng whaar 
i hop i shal out rech you im ebri grek and laten.” Sir Ralph 
answered: “I did not think you had been guilty of soe much 
learning as I see you are; and yet it seems you rest unsatisfied 
or else you would not threaten Lattin, Greeke, and Hebrew 
too. Good sweet harte bee not soe covitous; beleeve me a Bible 
(with y© Common prayer) and a good plaine cattichisme in 
your mother tongue being well read and practised, is well worth 
all the rest and much more sutable to your sex; I know your 
Father thinks thise false doctrine, but be confident your hus- 
band will bee of my oppinion. In French you can noi be too 
cunning for that language affords many admirable books fit for 
you as Romances, Plays, Poetry, Stories of illustrious (not 
learned) Woemen, receipts for preserving, makinge creames 
and all sorts of cookeryes, ordring your gardens and in Breif, all 
manner of good housewifery.” ! 

The general opinion was quite in accord with Luther when 
he said: ““Women should remain at home, sit still, keep house, 
and bear and bring up children”; ? or, at the best, with Mil- 
ton’s “He for God only, she for God in him.” 3 

Mr. Baldwyn, it is true, in 1619, in his New Help to Discourse, 
praises England as the place where women had the greatest 
prerogatives. In England, he says, women “are not kept so 
severely submiss” as in France, nor so jealously guarded as in 
Italy. “England is termed by foreigners the Paradise of Women 
as it is by some accounted the Hell of horses and the Purgatory 
of Servants. And it is a common byword among the Italians 
that if there were a bridge built over the narrow seas all women 
in Europe would run into England.” But this favorable 


1 Memoirs of the Verney Family, vol. mt, pp. 72-74. 

2 Luther, Martin: Table Talk (edited by William Hazlitt), no. pccxxy. 

3 Milton, John: Paradise Lost, bk. rv, 299. 

4 Notes and Queries, 4th Series, vol. rv, p. 195. For many years the superior 
advantages accorded English women was a stock subject of national self-con- 
gratulation. In the light of this fact we read with interest a comment by De 
Segur in 1803: ““The English women live much in the same manner as those 


26 THE LEARNED LADY 


opinion must be discounted as being a retrospective estimate 
based mainly on the attitude towards women in the sixteenth 
century; and further, as being an Englishman’s attempt to 
exalt English as against continental customs. 

Of more curious interest is the ingenious attempt of the 
Bishop of London to interpret the account of the creation of Eve 
from Adam’s rib as an intention on the part of the Creator to 
teach the equality of woman with man. The Bishop says: “The 
species of this bone is exprest to be costa, a rib, a bone of the 
side, not of the head: a woman is not domina, the ruler; nor 
of any anterior part; she is not prelata, preferred before the 
man; nor a bone of the foote; she is not serva, a handmaid; nor 
of any hinder part; she is not post-posita, set behind the man; 
but a bone of the side, of a middle and indifferent part, to show 
that she is socta, a companion to her husband. For qui jun- 
gunter lateribus, socii sunt, they that walke side to side, cheeke 
to cheeke, walke as companions.” ! 

One book definitely in honor of the ladies came out rather 
late in the period. This was Charles Gerbier’s Elogium Heroi- 
num. The Ladies’ Vindication: or, The Praise of Worthy Women. 
The threefold dedication to the Princess of Bohemia, “whose 
marvellous wisdom and profound knowledge in Arts, Sciences, 
and Languages, is admired by all men,” to the Countess Dowa- 
ger of Claire, “a Patroness of the Muses, a general Lover of 
the Languages, and Knowledge”; and to the “Vertuous Ac- 
complisht Lady Anne Hudson,” is justified by the three prin- 
ciples in natural philosophy, the three theological virtues, and 
of Turkey, with the exception of walls and keepers. Without being so much 
everlooked, they suffer equal constraint. However great the superiority they 
may be sensible they possess above their husbands, they are obliged to re- 
spect and to fear them; and they endeavor to acquire their love as a matter 
of necessity. Such is also the lesson they give to their children, and it may be 
remarked that they recommend it to them rather as a political measure than 
as a duty. In fact, they can command only by obeying; and when it is said 
that a woman is happier in England than in any other country, it is only say- 
ing that she is prepared, by her education, to be more satisfied than another 
woman with a mediocrity of happiness.” (Hill, Georgiana: Women in English 


Life, vol. 11, p. 89.) 
1 Notes and Queries, 1st Series, vol. 11, p. 214. 


IN ENGLAND BEFORE 1650 27 


the three graces. “Woman,” says Mr. Gerbier, “is capable of 
as high improvement as man,” an assertion which he proceeds 
to establish by the following arguments: “Does not Sophia 
signify wisdom? Are not Faith, Hope and Charity represented 
as Women? Are not the Seven Liberal Arts exprest in Women’s 
Shapes? Are not the Nine Muses Daughters of Jupiter? Is 
not Wisdom called the Daughter of the Highest?” His list of 
worthy women begins with the Queen of Sheba who disputed 
with Solomon, goes enthusiastically through the famous dames 
of Greece and Rome, including the Muses and the Sibyls, and 
touches upon later learned women such as “Christine de Pisan, 
Margaret of Vallois, Lady Jane Grey, the Countess of Pem- 
broke, the daughters of Sir Anthony Cooke,” and a few other 
outstanding personages of Tudor times. Praise so heterogeneous 
and uncritical was perhaps of little value, but such as it is, it 
stands alone in England in the period between Elizabeth and 
Charles II as a defense of learned women. And no defense or 
protest comes from the pen of a woman. - 

It should, however, be noted that in European countries 
women were more vitally concerned in their own destinies. Be- 
tween 1600 and 1641 there appeared at least three significant 
books by women dealing with the intellectual emancipation 
of their sex. The earliest of these came from Italy in 1608 with 
a second edition in 1621. It was written by a young Vene- 
tian widow, Lucrecia Marinelli (1571-1653), and was entitled 
Della notabilita e della eccellenza delle donne e dei difetti degli 
uomini. A second and better known book was by Marie de 
Jars, the fille d’alliance of Montaigne, usually known as Mlle. 
de Gournay.! Her book, entitled L’Egalité des Hommes et des 
Femmes, appeared in 1604 when “the Pride of Gournay,” 
“the French Siren,” as she was called, had become well known 
in the cultivated circles of Paris through her definitive edition 
of Montaigne’s works in 1595. Mlle. de Gournay’s thesis as 

1 See Schiff, Mario: La Fille dalliance de Montaigne: Marie de Gournay. 
(An account of her life; a list of her works; her two essays in defense of women, 


and an account of her relations with Anna van Schurman. Reviewed in Mod- 
ern Language Notes, 1911.) 


28 THE LEARNED LADY 


to the dignity and capacity of women is established by divine 
authority and by citations from the church fathers and ancient 
philosophers. She follows up these expressions of opinion by 
a thorough résumé from sacred and profane history of the 
women who have worthily held high places. M. Feugére ! 
voices what must be the opinion of any modern reader when he 
says that L’Egalité would be plus piquant without the pedantic 
form in which it is cast, without les citations fréquentes et les 
raisonnements scholastiques qui le surchargent. But however 
cumbersome we may find her method, it apparently suited her 
public, for the book was enthusiastically received. 

The third and by far the most important book on the posi- 
tion and desirable training of women was by Anna van Schur- 
man of Utrecht. The extremes to which Mlle. de Gournay 
carried her doctrines were distasteful to Anna van Schurman, 
yet many of her ideas were doubtless based on the work of her 
French predecessor, la mére du féminisme moderne. Anna 
van Schurman’s book was translated into English and had 
a direct influence on the progress of English educational 
ideals for women. It is taken up in detail later in this dis- 
cussion. 

The low estimate of learning, in the first half of the seven- 
teenth century, as an appropriate pursuit for women, had as 
its natural outcome a great decrease in the number of women 
who devoted themselves to any form of scholarship. The names 
that remain to us from this period as in any way connected 
with literature or learning form a singularly inchoate list, in- 
teresting, for the most part, because of the oddities it repre- 
sents rather than because of any solid achievements. Of con- 
siderable importance are several ladies in the early years of 
the Stuarts who followed in the footsteps of Lady Pembroke 
as patronesses of learning. The first of these was Lady Bed- 
ford, who held her “graceful and brilliant little court” at 
Twickenham Park between 1608 and 1618. Daniel, Drayton, 
Donne, and Jonson were among those who celebrated her mu- 

1 Feugére, Leon: Les femmes poétes au XV Ie siécle. 


IN ENGLAND BEFORE 1650 29 


nificence. Though Lady Bedford wrote verses she had no pro- 
nounced literary pursuits of her own. Her “considerable and 
varied learning” went preferably along antiquarian and horti- 
cultural lines. She collected medals and pictures, and she de- 
signed a garden highly praised by Sir William Temple. She 
is of importance chiefly because, in an age when learning lived 
only as it found patrons, she was magnificent in her hospitality 
to the poets.! Lady Mary Wroth was a niece of Lady Pembroke 
and carried on the traditional family attitude towards poets. 
Jonson’s Alchemist (1610) was dedicated to her, and Chapman’s 
Iliad (1614) had a prefatory sonnet addressed to her. She 
wrote The Countess of Monigomerie’s Urania (1621), in four 
books, a work modeled on her uncle’s Arcadia. A third pa- 
troness was Elizabeth Spencer, wife of Sir George Carey. She 
was a kinswoman of Edmund Spenser and he commemorated 
her for “the excellent favors” she had granted him. 

One of the most notable young women of the time of 
James I was Elizabeth Jocelyn (1596-1622). She was brought 
up by her grandfather, William Chaderton, Bishop of Lincoln. 
He was a friend of Sir Anthony Coke and Lord Burleigh and 
naturally shared their ideas as to education. The quick wit and 
remarkable memory of this little granddaughter greatly pleased 
him and he took the utmost pains with her education, training 
her carefully in “languages, history, and some arts,” but prin- 
cipally in “studies of piety.” She died nine days after the birth 
of her first child to whom she left The Mother’s Legacie to her 
Unborne Childe. The third edition came out in 1625, an incor- 
rect impression in 1684, and a reprint of the 1625 edition in 
1852.2 The little book contains a letter to her husband in which 
she indicates her wishes in case the child should be a girl: 

1 Thomas: Feminine Influence on the Poets, pp. 335-40. 

2 This edition, brought out by Messrs. Blackwood, “is accompanied by a 
long preface or dissertation containing many particulars relating to the au- 
thoress and her relatives, and to a number of ladies of high station and polished 
education, who, during the period intervening between the Reformation in 
England and the Revolution in 1688, distinguished themselves by publishing 


works characterized by exalted piety and refined taste.” (Notes and Queries, 
1st Series, vol. rv, p. 410.) I have not had access to this edition. 


30 THE LEARNED LADY 


I desire her bringing up to bee learning the Bible, as my sisters doe, 
good housewifery, writing and good workes: other learning a woman 
needs not; though I admire it in those whom God hath blest with dis- 
cretion, yet I desired not so much in my owne, having seene that some- 
times women have greater portions of learning than wisdome, which is 
of no better use to them than a main saile to a flye-boat, which runs 
under water. But where learning and wisdom meet in a vertuous 
disposed woman, she is the fittest closet of all goodnesse. She is, 
indeed, I should but shame myself, if I should goe about to praise 
her more. But, my dear, though she have all this in her, she will 
hardly make a poore man’s wife: Yet I leave it to thy will. If thou 
desirest a learned daughter, I pray God give her a wise and religious 
heart, that she may use it to his glory, thy comfort, and her owne 
salvation. 


Nearly all of the book is given up to cautions and plans for 
a boy’s education. And for boy or girl there is great emphasis 
on religion, on attending services, reading the Bible, and keep- 
ing up habits of daily devotion. Of the prayers definitely rec- 
ommended, one for morning is one hundred and eighty lines, » 
and one suitable for all times is three hundred and fifty- 
nine lines. In the brief portion addressed directly to the girl, 
“Devout Anna, Just Elizabeth, Religious Ester, and Chaste 
Susanna’”’ are held up as exemplars. Self-effacement seems the 
chief duty enjoined on the girl: “If thou beest a Daughter, 
remember thou art a Maid, and such ought thy modesty to bee, 
that thou shouldst scarce speak, but when thou answerest.” 
The book was deservedly popular because it was so genuine 
in its forecast of sorrow, so pathetically eager in plans and hopes 
for her husband and child. No other work so personal and 
human in its appeal comes to light in this period. 

There are during the first half of the century a few books by 
women on practical subjects. They could hardly take rank as 
learned productions, but they are significant as early attempts 
on the part of women to put into some sort of readable form, 
and to print for the instruction of other women, the wisdom 
garnered through years of experience. One of these books 
appeared in 1628 and was entitled The Countess of Lincoln’s 


IN ENGLAND BEFORE 1650 31 


Nurserie.1 The Countess was the mother of seven sons and 
nine daughters and wrote this little treatise particularly for 
the guidance of her daughter-in-law Bridget. It is described as 
“‘s, well-wrote piece full of fine arguments, and capable of con- 
vincing anyone that is capable of conviction, of the necessity 
and advantages of mothers nursing their children.” A second 
book transmitted information of another sort. Before 1651 
Elizabeth Grey, Countess of Kent (1581-1651), the grand- 
daughter of Bess of Hardwick, wrote or compiled A Choice 
Manuall, or Rare and Select Receipts in Physick and Chyrurgery. 
A second part, entitled A True Gentlewoman’s Delight Wherein 
is contained all manner of Cookery, reached its nineteenth edi- 
tion in 1687. The Legacie, the Nurserie, the Choice Manuall, 
were the direct outcome of interests considered appropriate 
for women, and such publicity as they involved would not be 
challenged. 

Letter-writing is also a realm ascribed without question to 
women, and when chance has rescued from oblivion any group 
of their letters, social history has been thereby enriched. The 
earliest Englishwoman, any large number of whose letters have 
been preserved and published, is Lady Brilliana Harley (1600- 
43) who wrote to her son Edward while he was at Oxford in 
the years 1638-40. She was a woman of pronounced religious 
and political opinions, observant, domestic, and with a ready 
pen for picturesque detail, and her letters are of more interest 
than most of the contemporary published work.? 

A few women have more directly to do with learning than 
those already mentioned. Occasionally in some great family 
Tudor traditions were maintained. Margaret, Countess of 
Cumberland (1560-1616), for instance, held to the idea that 
maidens of noble houses must be nobly educated, and she 
induced the poet Daniel to live at Skipton Castle as tutor to 
Anne, her nine-year-old daughter. Bishop Rainbow, who knew 
the family well, gives the following account of Anne: 


? Ballard: Memoirs, pp. 265-66. 
2 Two hundred and five letters published by The Camden Society in 1854. 


"32 THE LEARNED LADY 


She could discourse with virtuoso’s, travellers, scholars, merchants, 
divines, statesmen, and with good housewives in any kind: insomuch 
that a prime and elegant wit, Dr. Donne, well seen in all human 
learning . . . is reported to have said of this lady, in her younger years 
to this effect; that she knew well how to discourse of all things from 
predestination to slea-silk. Meaning that although she was skilful 
in her housewifery, and such things in which women are conversant, 
yet her penetrating wit soared up to pry into the highest mysteries, 
looking at the highest example of female wisdom. Although she knew 
Wool and Flaz, fine Linen and Silk, things appertaining to the spindle 
and the distaff: yet she could open her mouth with wisdom... . Ii she 
had sought fame rather than wisdom, possibly she might have been 
ranked among those wise and learned of her sex, of whom Pythagoras 
or Plutarch, or any of the ancients have made such honourable men- 
tion.! : 


A portrait of Anne at thirteen represents the books supposedly 
read by her under her tutor, Mr. Daniel, and her governess, 
Mrs. Ann Taylor, whose heads appear in the picture. The 
books are “Eusebius, St. Augustine, Sir Philip Sidney’s Arca- 
dia, Godfrey of Boulogne, The French Academy, Cambden, 
Ortelius, and Agrippa on the Vanity of Occult Sciences.” ? 

At nineteen Anne married the Earl of Dorset. Her second 
marriage, in middle life, was to Philip Herbert, Fourth Earl 
of Pembroke and Montgomery. In alliance with these noble 
houses she was extremely unhappy. In her Journal she says: 
“The marble pillars of Knowle in Kent and Wilton in Wilt- 
shire, were to me often times but the gay arbor of anguish. A 
wise man, that knew the insides of my fortune, would often 
say, that I lived in both these my lords’ great families as the 
river Roan runs through the lake of Geneva, without mingling 
its streams with the lake; for I gave myself up to retiredness as 
much as I could and made good books and virtuous thoughts 
my companions.” * A portrait, belonging to this period of mid- 
dle life, indicates as the books then most favored, “the Bible, 


1 Biographium Femineum, vol. 11, p. 193. From Funeral Sermon by Bishop 
Rainbow on the text, “Every wise woman buildeth her house” (Proverbs 
xiv, 1); Coleridge, Hartley: Worthies of Yorkshire and Lancashire, p. 291. 

2 Mr. Pennant’s Tour in Scotland (ed. 1790), part 11, pp. 355-62. 

3 Ibid., p. 360. 


ANNE CLIFFORD, COUNTESS OF DORSET, PEMBROKE 
AND MONTGOMERY 


From an engraving in Pennant’s Tour in Scotland, 1790, Part IL 


” 
; . 
va 
Ww 
ay r 
“ 
f 7] 


IN ENGLAND BEFORE 1650 33 


Charron on Wisdom and pious treatises.” Lady Pembroke’s 
pursuit of abstract and theological learning was, however, 
largely the outcome of her repressed and unhappy life. On 
her second widowhood, in 1650, she forsook learning and gave 
free reign to her “master-passion for bricks and mortar.” But 
most of this energetic work, during which she rebuilt or re- 
stored her six castles and several churches, belongs after the 
Restoration. As a woman of affairs Lady Pembroke made a 
remarkable impression on her age. Bishop Rainbow, who says 
she had “a clear soul shining through a vivid body,” empha- 
sizes also “her great understanding and judgment.” Pennant, 
in his Tour, said that she was regarded as “the most eminent 
character of her times, for intellectual accomplishments, for 
spirit, magnificence, and benevolence.” 

Another lady who carried over into this period the liberal 
training of Tudor days was Elizabeth Tanfield (1585-1639), 
who, at the age of fifteen, married Henry Carey, later Viscount 
Falkland. Our knowledge of her very interesting life and char- 
acter is derived mainly from a Life written by one of her daugh- 
ters. She was a lover of books from her childhood and learned 
languages — French, Latin, Greek, Hebrew, and Transyl- 
vanian — practically without a teacher. Her daughter said 
of her: 

When she was but four or five years old they put her to learn 
French, which she did about five weeks, and not profiting at all gave it 
over; after, of herself, without a teacher, whilst she was a child she 
learned French, Spanish and Italian; ...she learned Latin in the 
same manner. . . . Hebrew she likewise, about the same time, learned 
with very little teaching. . . . She then learned also of a Transylvanian 
his language, but never finding any use of it forgot it entirely. She 
read so incessantly at night that her mother forbade the servants to 
give her candles. But she bought candles at half a crown apiece of 
the servants and at twelve was £100 in their debt, a debt which she 
paid on her wedding day. 


Her work as an author began early, for her first play was writ- 
ten about the time of her marriage. It was dedicated to her 
husband. A second play, The Tragedy of Mariam the Faire 


34 THE LEARNED LADY 


Queene of Jewry, was written when she was eighteen or nine- 
teen, though not printed till 1613.1 She was early recognized as 
one of the most intellectual women of her time. In 1612 she was 
one of the three “Glories of Women” to whom John Davies 
dedicated his Muses Sacrifice. Later, in 1633, the publisher of 
Marston’s Works dedicated them “To the Right Honourable 
the Lady Elizabeth Carey, Viscountess Falkland,” because 
she was so “well acquainted with the Muses.” That Lady Falk- 
land’s appetite for learning never abated is apparent from her 
daughter’s testimony: 

She had read very exceedingly much: poetry of all kinds ancient and 
modern in several languages, all that ever she could meet; history 
very universally, especially all ancient Greek and Roman histories; 
all chronicles whatsoever of her own country, and the French histo- 
ries very thoroughly: of most other countries something, though not 
so universally, of the ecclesiastical very much, most especially con- 
cerning its chief pastors. Of books treating of moral virtue or wisdom 
(such as Seneca, Plutarch’s Morals, and natural knowledge, as Pliny, 
and of late ones, such as French, Mountaine, and English, Bacon) she 
had read very many when she was young. Of the fathers and controver- 
sial writers on both sides a great deal even of Luther and Calvin.? _ 


Lady Falkland was converted to Catholicism in 1605 and 
’ she devoted all her learning to the service of the Church. She 
translated Cardinal Perron’s Works and wrote lives of the 
saints in verse. 

Lady Falkland’s son Lucius married Letice Morrison, another 
‘undue lover of books,” who abridged herself of sleep that the 
hours of reading might be prolonged. This daughter-in-law 
of Lady Falkland was not only eager for learning, but she had 
independent views along social lines. One of her schemes was 
the foundation of houses “for the education of young gentle- 
women and the retirement of widows with the belief that 
through such houses learning and religion might flourish more 
than heretofore in her own sex.” Her early death in the time 
of the Civil War frustrated her plans, but they have an especial 


1 The Tragedy of Mariam, Malone Society Reprint, “Introduction.” 
2 Godfrey, Elizabeth: Home Life among the Stuarts, p. 103. , 


IN ENGLAND BEFORE 1650 35 


interest as forecasting the ideas set forth by Mary Astell later 
in the century.! 

Anna Hume, the daughter of David Hume, was carefully 
educated by her father at Godscroft, a property to which he 
retired that he might be unmolested in his devotion to litera- 
ture. Anna joined in his pursuits with eagerness and intelli- 
gence, and after his death she did much to complete his work. 
In 1644 she superintended the publication of his Hzstory of the 
House and Race of Douglas and Angus. She translated Latin 
poems, and in 1644 she also published The Triumph of Love, 
Chastity and Death, translated from Petrarch. Drummond of 
Hawthornden speaks highly of her learning and of her “rare 
and pregnant wit.” . 

Esther Kello (1571-1624) is often spoken of as one of the 
notable women of the Stuart period. Her works were counted 
worthy gifts for kings, and are preserved in royal libraries. Cal- 
ligraphy was one of the fine arts in the seventeenth century. 
To write many different hands, to make flourishes, to deco- 
rate margins, to illuminate titles and capital letters, to make 
elaborate head or iail pieces to chapters, and to write the 
alphabets of many languages, were the elements of this art. 
No other accomplishment was so often advertised.? It was in 
this art that Esther Kello excelled. Les Proverbes de Salomon 
(1599), written in forty hands, and with all possible ornamenial 
detail, was one of her most famous books. It was preserved 
in “Bodley’s Library.” In exactness, fineness, and beauty her 
books are said to rival the old ilumimated manuscripts.* 

There was published in 1630 a twelve-page tract entitled 
A Chain of Pearl, or a Memorial of the Peerless Graces and 

1 Carter, Thomas T.: The Life of Nicholas Ferrar, p. 102. 

2 The Term Catalogues illustrate the permanence of this interest. Edward 
Cocker was one of the best-known calligraphers in the second half of the seven- 
teenth century. One of his works is England's Penman, or Cocker’s new Copy- 
Book, containing all the curious Hands practised in England and our neighbor- 
ing Nations with admirable directions peculiar to each Hand. So also the Breaks 
of Secretary, Roman, and Tialian Letiers; with the exemplifying Couri-hand, and 


an exact copy of the Greek alphabet. (1679.) 
3 Ballard: Memoirs, p. 188. 


36 THE LEARNED LADY 


heroic Virtues of Queen Elizabeth, of glorious memory, composed 
by the noble lady, Diana Primrose. The Pearls of the Chain 
are Religion, Chastity, Prudence, Temperance, Clemency, 
Justice, Fortitude, Science, Patience, and Bounty. A prelimi- 
nary address to the author by one Dorothy Berry greets Diana 
as “the Prime-rose of the Muses nine.” The Pearls are in the 
style of exaggerated compliment always associated with the 
name of Queen Elizabeth, but they could not have been in- 
spired by any interested motives, for Elizabeth had been dead 
nearly a generation when they came from the press. Save the 
date of publication I have no facts about either Diana Prim- 
rose or Dorothy Berry. Perhaps their youth was spent during 
the “blest and happy years” when the Heroine they praised 
was on the throne. 


She, she it was that gave us golden days, 
And did the English name to heaven raise. 


If so, and if they wrote when trouble was brewing between the 
King and the people, we can well understand the ardor of 
Diana Primrose’s eulogy of the days when the Prince and 
People agreed “in sacred concord and sweet sympathy.” 

A very curious book is by Mary Fage. It is entitled Fame’s 
Roule and appeared in 1637.! It is a collection of the most in- 
genious anagrams and acrostics on the names of four hundred 
and twenty persons of the “hopeful posterity” of Charles I. 
John Weymes, for instance, is anagrammed into “Show men 
joy”? and John Hollis into “Oh! on my hills.” The amplifica- 
tion of the anagram is mainly compliment with now and then 
a trace of exhortation. This was an age when playing with 
words gave undoubted pleasure, but four hundred and twenty 
anagrams on royal names would seem an undue tax on even 
the most agile manipulator of the alphabet. 

Katherine Chidley wrote and spoke on questions of Church 
and State. In 1641 she published a quarto volume entitled 
The Justification of the Independent Churches of Christ, in 


1 Dyce: Specimens, p. 510. 


IN ENGLAND BEFORE 1650 37 


which she maintained that the congregations of the Saints 
should receive “no direction in worship from any other than 
Christ their head and lawgiver.” She is described as “a most 
violent independent who talked with so much bitterness and 
with so clamorous a tongue as to vanquish opposing divines, 
and who wrote as furiously in behalf of her cause as if she were 
the Amazonian Queen in defence of the Trojans.” 

A literary oddity of the Cromwell period, a fertile writer 
whose half-mad and often unintelligible prophetic writings 
yet came true often enough to secure her a troublesome reputa- 
tion as a “Cunning Woman,” was Lady Eleanor Davies, the 
wife of Sir John Davies of Hereford. She was twice married 
and both husbands had burned her manuscripts, but finally, in 
1651, there was printed a pamphlet, The Restitution of Proph- 
ecy; that Buried Talent to be revived. By the Lady Eleanor.' 
The Lady Eleanor was as devoted to anagrams as was Mary 
Fage. The change of Eleanor Davies into “Reveal O Daniel” 
was her mystic authorization as a prophet, until some wit 
shattered her anagram by producing “Never so mad a lady.” 


4, SCHOOLS FOR GIRLS BEFORE 1660 


Of schools for girls during the period before 1660 we get but 
vague hints. John Whitgift, who became Archbishop of Can- 
terbury in 1583, protested against having schools for “maiden 
children” within the precincts of the church. And he added 
in a note, “Especially seeing they may have instruction by 
women in the town.” 2 In the statutes of Harrow School, made 
in 1590, there is a statement to the effect that “no girls shall 
be received or taught,’ hence the subject had at least been 
under discussion. Love’s Labour ’s Lost seems to indicate that 
Holofernes taught girls as well as boys,* and Helena comments 


1 Dyce: Specimens, pp. 271-80. 

2 Strype, John: The Life and Acts of John Whitgift, vol. 1m, p. 383. 

3 Monroe, Paul: Cyclopedia of Education, under “Women, Higher Educa- 
tion of.” 

4 Love’s Labour’s Lost, Act tv, Sc. 2. (1591.) 


38 THE LEARNED LADY 


on the “school-days’ friendship” between her and Hermia.! 
But these references belong to late Elizabethan times and are 
too indefinite to serve as evidence. 

+ The best-known schools for girls in the first half of the seven- 
teenth century were apparently religious in origin. One of 
these is the “Institute” founded by Mary Ward (1585—-1645).? 
She was a brilliant and beautiful young Catholic who made it 
the aim of her life to influence young women to an acceptance 
of the Catholic faith. This she endeavored to accomplish 
through educational agencies. It was her plan to have an or- 
ganization of uncloistered nuns who should not wear habits, 
who should be free to come and go, and who should adapt 
themselves in manner and dress to their surroundings in such 
ways as might be most advisable in the pursuance of their 
spiritual aims. Conditions in England made it useless to at- 
tempt such a school or community there. So the first estab- 
lishment of the Institute was at St. Omer. This was in 1609. 
Five gentlewomen crossed the sea at that time with Mary 
Ward, The one she loved and trusted most was Winifred Wig- 
more, a descendant of the Throgmortons of Warwickshire, 
and so well educated that she spoke five languages fluently. 
She had a keen intellect, was wise, sympathetic, courageous, 
and very deyout. Mary Poyntz, “gifted with all that can be 
most highly esteemed in person, birth or fortune,” the young- 
est of the group, was scarcely sixteen when she cast her lot in 
permanently with Mary Ward. Of Jane Browne, Catharine 
Smith, and Susanna Rookwood fewer details are given. Later 
on Miss Ward was joined by Barbara Babthorpe, “highly 
educated and very well read... with a striking gift of elo- 
quence,” and by her own sister Barbara Ward. Each of these 
ladies had a companion, so it was quite a household that as- 
sembled at St. Omer, and they entered at once upon the life 


1 4A Midsummer Night's Dream, Act m1, Sc. 2. (1594-95.) 

2 See Chambers, Mary C. E.: The Life of Mary Ward, ed. by Henry James 
Coleridge; Mary Salome (Mother): Mary Ward, a Foundress of the Seventeenth — 
Century. 


MARY WARD 


From an engraving in The Life of Mary Ward, by Mary Elizabeth Chambers 
of the Institute ofthe Blessed Virgin 


IN ENGLAND BEFORE 1650 39 


they had planned. They practiced rigid self-denial, living on 
one meal a day and sleeping on straw beds, and submitting 
themselves to other austerities. Their time was given over to 
good works, especially to education. They established a school 
for French and English girls, receiving the English girls as 
boarders. In 1612 Miss Ward said that they had already re- 
ceived two nieces of the Earl of Shrewsbury, and another young 
lady from the family of the Earl of Southampton, and that 
many Catholic nobles were planning to send their daughters 
to be brought up in the Faith and good manners, by the 
ladies of St. Omer. 

The Institute finally received the sanction of the pope and 
was successful in various countries. But Miss Ward’s efforts to 
establish it in England in 1638 met with so much hostility that 
she was obliged to carry on her work secretly and by subter- 
fuge, changing the location of her little band of followers from 
time to time as suspicion centered upon them. The Institute 
was finally broken up by the Puritans in 1642. Little is known 

of the actual work of the school. The members of the Insti- 
tute were always so anxious and harried that there could have 
been no really systematic instruction except in the articles of 
faith. There are in the Convent of the Institute at Augsburg 
fifty large oil paintings dating from the seventeenth century, 
and representing events in its history. In these pictures Mary 
Ward’s life is seen to be one of dramatic interest from her child- 
hood to her death. And her personality is one of compelling 
charm. She was a heroine and a pioneer, an executive of first- 
rate ability, an extremely acute woman of business, and yet 
without loss of the graces and amenities of human intercourse. 
The St. Omer school shows genius. Within the limits of her 
church she was promulgating ideas the full fruition of which 
would not come for many years. She believed that sound men- 
tal training would establish women in their faith, and that 
women, if given opportunity and education, would prove to 
have powers not generally ascribed to them. To establish a 
school on this basis was an enterprise bolder, more original, 


40 THE LEARNED LADY 


and more hazardous than was the opening of the first colleges 
for women in America. 

Another religious school was that known as Little Gidding,! 
founded by Nicholas Ferrar (1592-1637). The life of Ferrar 
is one of great interest. He was a man of wide experience. He 
had known academic life at Cambridge, he had traveled in 
Holland, Germany, Italy, and Spain, he had conducted ex- 
tensive business enterprises in connection with the Virginia 
Company, and had taken an important place in political life 
as a member of Parliament. But while still under forty he 
turned definitely to a life of religious sequestration. He and 
his mother bought the Manor of Little Gidding in Huntingdon- 
shire in 1624 and there they set up the new establishment. He 
was joined by his brother John with his wife and three children, 
and by Mrs. Collet, his favorite sister, with her husband and 
sixteen children. To the children of these two families were 
added such children of the neighboring gentry as cared to come. 
In this household the girls were carefully educated. They had 
one master in Music, one in Arithmetic and Writing, one in 
English and Latin. They formed themselves into a little so- 
ciety called “The Academy” which had regular meetings for 
discussion of topics set for them. They took fanciful names, 


1 Much has been written concerning the life of Little Gidding. In 1790 
Mr. G. P. Peckard, Master of Magdalene College, Cambridge, and the hus- 
band of a descendant of the Ferrar family, published Memoirs of the Life of 
Mr. Nicholas Ferrar (reprinted in Wordsworth’s Ecclesiastical Biography, 
vol. tv). In 1828 and again in 1837 appeared Brief Memoirs of Nicholas 
Ferrar, by the Reverend T. M. Macdonogh (based on an unpublished Lzfe 
by Bishop Turner, extracts from which had been published in The Christian 
Magazine in 1761). An abridgment of Peckard’s Memoirs appeared in 1852. 
In 1855 came the most important of the works on Ferrar. It was Nicholas 
Ferrar, Two Lives, by J. E. B. Mayor, Cambridge. The Reverend Thomas 
Carter’s Nicholas Ferrar, his Household and Friends, came out in 1892. In 
1880 Mr. J. Henry Shorthouse described Little Gidding in chapter 1v of 
John Inglesant. In 1896 Emma Marshall, in A Haunt of Ancient Peace, also 
introduced the life of Little Gidding into a fictitious narrative. In 1899 the 
Story Books of Little Gidding were edited by E. C. Shorland. In Archeologia 
for 1888 is Captain J. E. Ackland’s “‘Catalogue of the Gidding Concordances.” 
In Thomas Hearne’s Cazi Vindicie, vol. 1, pp. 713-94, is ““Remains of the 
Maiden-Sisters’ Exercises at Little Gidding.”’ In Bibliographica is an account 
of the Bindings. See also Godfrey’s Social Life under the Stuarts, pp. 209-15. 


IN ENGLAND BEFORE 1650 41 


and had many quaint and elaborate little formalities. The 
topics discussed by “Patient” and “Cheerful” and “Modera- 
tor’ and “ Visitor,” and even by little four-year-old “Humble,” 
were nearly always religious or ethical, and the purpose of the 
discussions was always moral improvement. So strong was the 
religious element, so rigid were the forms of fasting, feasting, 
and worshiping, that the school came under suspicion as a Prot- 
estant nunnery. In 1641 it was attacked in a pamphlet en- 
titled The Armenian Nunnery, or a Brief Description and Rela- 
tion of the newly erected Monasticall Place called the Armenian 
Nunnery at Little Gidding. 

The school at Little Gidding has had its fame as a religious 
organization perpetuated in Mr. Shorthouse’s John Inglesant, 
but it is even more famous in the annals of fine book-binding. 
It was the belief of Nicholas Ferrar that every one should be 
taught some hand-work, and he determined upon book-bind- 
ing as a part of the regular school work at Little Gidding. Dr. 
Jebb says that “a Cambridge book-binder’s daughter that 
bound rarely” was procured as an instructor. She came, he says, 
either from the University printers themselves or from some 
Cambridge bindery which they patronized where she herself had 
been trained. She brought some of her own stamps with her, 
and some of her own ideas as to how they should be arranged. 

Even this activity was the handmaid of religion, and was, 
indeed, probably undertaken primarily in order to preserve the 
concordances of the four gospels so carefully worked out by 
Nicholas Ferrar. The girls learned to do all the mechanical 
parts with extreme nicety, joining the many tiny slips and 
putting in the illustrative engravings with great deftness. The 
name of the binder is not usually given in the book, but there 
is one exception. A book bound by the youngest of the workers 
bears the inscription: 

Thanks be to God. 


Done at Little Gidding. Anno Domino 1640 
by Virginia Ferrar, an. 12. 1 
1 Carter, T. T.: Life of Nicholas Ferrar, p. 127. , 


42 THE LEARNED LADY 


The curious little “histories” composed by “The Academy’ 
were written out in three manuscript volumes and bound. 
They have been lately acquired by the British Museum. “The 
volumes measure 13}x9 inches and are bound in black mo- 
rocco, with a small double gold line running along the edge, 
finished with a little ornamental spray at each corner.” The 
Concordances were more sumptuous. The Bibliographica gives 
full-page colored illustrations of these fine bindings and says 
of them: 


The beautiful effect which Mary Collet, who seems to have done 
much of the binding herself, was able to produce by different arrange- 
ments of the stamps I have described shows that she was undoubtedly 
a lady of much taste and originality ...and it may fairly be con- 
sidered that the velvet-bound volumes, of great size, gorgeous in color 
and rich in decoration, which were eventually produced under her 
supervision, must take the highest rank among amateur decorative 
book-bindings. 

Unequalled in size, original in design, and rich in execution, these 
volumes must be seen to be appreciated; then indeed the expressions 
which Charles I used concerning them, which sound extravagant, can 
be well understood. Although much faded, and sometimes re-backed 
and the sides relaid, with the silken ties all gone, enough of their old 
magnificence still remains to make us feel that we should indeed be 
proud that English binders could have produced such works. 


Aside from these religious schools, which were very small, 
there were undoubtedly some fashionable boarding-schools, 
such as Mrs. Salmon’s school in Hackney where Katherine 
Fowler went.? Another fully organized private school at Hack- 
ney was that kept by Mrs. Perwick in 1643, where as many 
as eight hundred girls had been educated.? The existence of a 
school for girls in Richmond is shown by a curious document 
found among a large number of miscellaneous papers in War- 
wickshire. It is entitled “Account for Peggy’s Disbursements 
since her going to schoole at Richmond, being in Sept. 1646”: 


1 Bibliographica, vol. u, pp. 129-49. Article by Cyril Davenport. 
2 See p. 54. 
3 Monroe: Cyclopedia of Education, under “Private Schools.” 


IN ENGLAND BEFORE 1650 43 


d s. d. 
Biaeadbrpr AMOHEHGGME | (16 « crsicne ayers bye sind do sine bepwesuerem OhEER Y= daa bes 2.6 
For carriing the truncke to Queenhive ..............2. 000 ee ce eeees 0. 8 
Mor-earring itt HAMMEPSMIth . . 2... 2b. ecccsc ccc cecceuetes ovens 1.0 
PEPER WO) PAN! OF SNOES, 2, Foals sac c chk weno s gee cuaeklecaideles ded 4. 0 
Reread tena SEITE DOOKE: 2: 3). 5 so wajese's «5,0, om oman te Seirus mle 1.0 
Gumenito NP Jervoises WAY. . 6... oti os ca ceuc view ccee ctlecacedess 1. 0 
Payed for a hairlace and a pair of showstrings ..............+-+-+00- 1.0 
PpmmrrreraecHornie ie iact, Ce SOL, UG an Sard Raa SO OE 0. 4 
For faggots. 2s.8d.; and cleaving of wood, 12d. ...........00eceeeeees 3. 8 
For 91 of soape 2s. 4d.; and starch 4d. 2... 2.2.00. .0ccceceeeeeeeceees 2. 8 
Hor hooks and 2-bolte for the doore. ....-.5.......-00-cccneccccsee 0. 9 
Peeemrraenrranrel hicorichts) 2 abt S683 its Ue. Su, PIEGEE Took a. 1.4 
Rpemeteccrenel Ehread..\, scrt Sat sees leer -arcrasit sroele aieejoe ae Ge ee © eh atcts 0. 6 
For 311 of soape, 11d.; and starch 4d.; and carrying letters 6d.. 1.9 
For 3! of soape, 12d.; and starch 4d. ............ 00 0c cececeeceeeeees 1. 4 
For sugar, licorich seidiealtstoot .. cic.. ooc ac hREMEES As eee te Aires 1.6 
For a necklace, 12d.; for a m. of pins, 12d ..... 0... 0... cece ee ce seen 2.0 
For a pair of cands (candles?) 6d.; for muckadine 4d.; for a Nec 

BORO REEE ete er erat Crane Ee rd cre ciavecer ts weind © ex epedie oie bin at sim eles 1.0 
For shostrings, 6d.; for going on errands, 6d..............00 eee coer 1.0 
For 3! of soape, 12d.; for starch 4d.; thread and silk 4d............... las 
For a bason, 4d.; for carrying letters. 6d.; for tape 4d. Sy 's sta eisinlere Dg 
For soape, 12d.; for starch, 4d.; for going on errands, 6d. Rees cies eile 1.10 
For a pair of pattins, 16d.; for three pair of shoes, 6s.. RRO LO TEA 
For callico to line her stocking, 2d.; for showstrings 4d. Sa nye Stepwieys ance nigh 0. 6 
For 3! of soape, Let for a pint of ae WVINC A meeps obo AW .cjs hic cis oie 1.4 
For ale, 3d.; for 4 li of sugar, 8d.. atin til 
Fora m. of pins, 124.; for a corle and ¢ one e pair of half-handed gloves, 8 8d. . tS 
Given to the writing mr. fe wh © «iano Ba O 
For silke, 12d.; for silver for ‘the toothpick case ‘4d. bis atop) c fe radete a's. wiaacior® 1. 4 
Fora sampler, 12d. for thread, needles, paper, pins, and parchment, 30d. 3. 6 
Horna par of shoes, 25!'2d.; for ribbon, Sd-.. 222 20525). Ee sa 2.5 
For soape, 12d.; for pears 4d. for carriing a letter, 4d................ 1.8 
To the waterman bringing the (box?) to Richmond.................. 1. 0 
EMSHOCSIEIMPS G0. LO0 PUTLC: TSO. <). csice yeciecociss coe stee sr eee 6 2.0 
For bringing the box from Richmond..............-. esse eee cece ees 1.0 
Hora ebach} from: Pleetestreete’s (1<)<i0's oh clei Jee oeiois eye es Fhe eee dole ey 
GOVGOUELOMLINS IMG ss ,2 5.5 core Sais eich caine wle's\ Unies We, sio ete re oS lag 15.10 


Totall of disbursements to this 15th day of Aprill, 1647 is..........£3.18.5! 


Peggy’s clothing and her board and tuition must have been 
paid for by her father. The accurate little list represents only 
her personal and incidental expenses. The writing-master’s 
fee, the purchase of an inkhorn, a singing-book, and materials 


1 Notes and Queries, 1st Series, vol. x1, p. 279. 


44 THE LEARNED LADY 


for a sampler are the only suggestions that Peggy was being 
educated. But several of the items are indicative of general 
school conditions. For instance, if a girl had a fire she evi- 
dently had to pay extra for it, Peggy’s largest single item be- 
ing for wood, “cleaving of wood,” and “‘faggotts.”’ The next 
largest sum goes for “soape” and starch. Peggy apparently 
did her own laundry, or at least bought the materials used; and 
she bought them in amounts suggestive of disproportionate 
emphasis on clean linen. In clothing the most surprising pur- 
chase is of six pairs of shoes and one pair of “pattins” in six 
months. It is a pity we have not the letters for the carrying of 
which Peggy paid ten pence. They might serve to throw light 
on her expense account. 

In May, 1649, Evelyn records in his Diary, “Went to Put- 
ney by water, in the barge with divers ladies, to see the schools, 
or Colleges, of the young gentlewomen.” These Putney schools 
may have been under the charge of Mrs. Makin. In that case 
they were the forerunners of the more advanced school she 
established at Tottenham High Cross in 1673. 

One interesting point occurs in the foundation of a school 
for boys by Balthasar Gerbier in 1648. This school was an 
academy wherein the sons of noble families could be taught 
classics, mathematics, drawing, painting, carving, music, 
behavior, etc. The novel element in the school is Gerbier’s 
advertisement December 21, 1649, in which he says that 
ladies are to be admitted to his lectures.! 

If girls were educated at all during the period from 1603 to 
1660 it must have been, in the main, at home under parents 
and tutors. But even of such education the records are meager. 
Little Gidding was practically a home school, but it stands as 
an isolated attempt. The few little pictures of more secular 
home education that have been by chance preserved to us indi- 
cate no very valuable training. Mrs. Alice Thornton (1626- 
1707), Lady Anne, daughter of the Earl of Strafford, and Lady 


1 Monroe, Paul: Cyclopedia of Education, under “‘Gerbier”; Notes and 
Queries, 1st Series, vol. 111, p. 317. 


IN ENGLAND BEFORE 1650 45 


Arabella Wentworth, were brought up in Ireland and were given 
“the best education that Kingdome could afford.” They were 
taught to write and speak French; singing, dancing, playing 
on the lute and theorboe, and such other accomplishments as 
“working silkes, gummework, sweetmeats, and other sutable 
huswifery”’ such as was necessary for girls of their social posi- 
tion.? 

We get some further light from autobiographical sketches 
by the Duchess of Newcastle,? Lady Fanshawe, and Mrs. 
Hutchinson,‘ women whose mature work belongs in the Re- 
storation period or not many years before it, but whose child- 
hood and early youth belong in the period under considera- 
tion, and serve in a measure to illustrate its methods. The 
educational advantages afforded these young daughters of the 
best families were like those of an eighteenth-century finishing- 
school, and were far removed from the stern mental discipline 
in the school of Sir Thomas More. 


1 Hill, Georgiana: Vows in English Life, bets I, p. 150. 
2 See p. 46. 3 See p. 74. 4 See p. 69. 


CHAPTER II 
LEARNED LADIES IN ENGLAND FROM 1650 TO 1760 


1, An INTRODUCTORY GROUP IN THE YEARS 1650-1675 


Tue brief running summaries in the preceding chapter have 
perhaps served to bring into prominence two sharply con- 
trasted periods. The first half of the sixteenth century and the 
first half of the seventeenth seem even more than a hundred 
years apart in tone and temper. We turn from the eager intel- 
lectual life of many women in the Tudor period, from their full 
and rich opportunities, and we find that in the time of the ear- 
lier Stuarts there were very few women who took any pride in 
learning, that there was little or no provision at home or in 
schools for any but the most desultory sort of education for 
girls, and that there were practically no formulated ideals or 
theories of intellectual advancement for women. But at the 
close of this barren half-century we come upon what may be 
considered the real beginnings of the modern work of women. 
This era of development may be appropriately introduced by 
the presentation of several women who, while in no sense co- 
hering into a group, are yet alike in that their home education 
belongs in the reign of Charles I, that later they had the stern 
training incident on Civil War conditions, and that their pub- 
lished work belongs before 1675. 

The most talked-of learned lady of the Restoration period 

was the Duchess of Newcastle.! She was brought 
Margaret Lucas, : > 
the Duchess up by her mother, who was left a widow with 
es Pepin a great fortune and a family of eight chil- 

dren when Margaret was an infant. The Duch- 
ess in her Autobiography describes a family life conducted 


1 See The Philosophical and Physical Opinions, Written by her Excellency, 
the Lady Marchionesse of Newcastle, London, 1655 (containing Lord New- 


Rs 


ye 


Se 


MARGARET CAVENDISH, DUCHESS OF NEWCASTLE 
From an engraving in Horace Walpole’s Royal and Noble Authors, London, 1806 


IN ENGLAND FROM 1650 TO 1760 AT 


with splendor and luxury. She comments on the elaborate at- 
tendance, the rich and costly garments, the many pleasures, 
secured for the children by the industrious care and tender love 
of their mother. It was a bright, gay, free, affectionate home 
life. But we get only slight indications of any educational ad- 
vantages. “‘As for tutors, although we had for all sorts of ver- 
tues, as singing, dancing, playing on musick, reading, writing, 
working, and the like, yet we were not kept strictly thereto, they 
were rather for formality than benefit, for my Mother cared not 
so much for our dancing and fidling, singing and prating of 
severall languages, as that we should be bred virtuously, mod- 
estly, civilly, honourably and on honest principles.” None of 
these opportunities met Margaret’s needs. She says she had 
a natural stupidity in learning foreign tongues, cared little for 
music, disliked needlework, found cards and games tiresome, 
and dancing frivolous. Apparently the freedom of the family 
life left her at liberty to follow her real interests which were in 
the main intellectual. Here she had the sympathetic aid of her 


castle’s “Epistle to justifie the Lady Newcastle, and Truth against falsehood, 
laying those false and malicious aspersions of her, that she was not Author of 
her Books.” Also “To the Reader,” “To the Two Universities,” “An Epi- 
logue” and several brief introductory epistles); Philosophical Letiers: or, Modest 
Reflections Upon some Opinions in Natural Philosophy, Maintained by several 
Famous and Learned Authors of this Age, Expressed by way of Letters: By the 
Thrice Noble, Illustrious, and Excellent Princess, the Lady Marchioness of New- 
castle, London, 1664 (containing ““To His Excellency the Lord Marquis of 
Newcastle,” ““To the most Famous University of Cambridge” and “To the 
Reader’’); A True Relation of the Birth, Breeding, and Life of Margaret Caven- 
dish, Duchess of Newcastle, Written by Herself. With a Critical Preface, etc., by 
Sir Egerton Brydges, M.P. Printed at the private Press of Lee Priory, 1814 
(taken from Nature’s Pictures drawn by Fancy’s Pencil); The Lives of William 
Cavendish Duke of Newcastle, and of his wife Margaret Duchess of Newcastle. 
Written by the thrice noble and illustrious Princess, Margaret, Duchess of New- 
castle, ed. by Mark Antony Lower, M.A., London, 1872 (a reprint of the first 
edition of 1667); The Life of William Cavendish Duke of Newcastle to which is 
added, The True Relation of My Birth, Breeding, and Life by Margaret, Duchess 
of Newcastle, ed. by C. H. Firth, M.A., Scribner, 1886; Letters and Poems in 
Honour of the Incomparable Princess, Margaret, Dutchess of Newcastle, Written 
by Several Persons of Honour and Learning. In the Savoy, 1676; Ballard: Me- 
moirs, pp. 299-306; Walpole, Horace: Royal and Noble Authors. 


48 THE LEARNED LADY 


brother, Lord Lucas. The precocious development of her mind 
is shown by the fact that at twelve she had written a book on 
a philosophical subject. 

At eighteen she was appointed maid of honor to Queen Hen- 
rietta Maria and accompanied her to France. There, at twenty, 
she became the second wife of the Duke of Newcastle, a noble- 
man thirty-two years older than herself, but who was, she says, 
“the onely Person I ever was in love with.” She was with him 
during the trying years of his absence from England and it was 
during this difficult and tedious period that literature became ~ 
her resource. Her publications began with Philosophical Fancies 
in 1653 and closed with Grounds of Natural Philosophy in 1668, 
during which period she wrote nearly twelve folio volumes. 
The portions of her work concerning which she felt the greatest 
measure of self-congratulation were her studies in natural phi- 
losophy. Her Philosophical Fancies of 1653 was expanded in 
1655, and in 1663 received its final form as Philosophical and 
Physical Opinions. Of all her books this was “her best beloved 
and favourite.”’ But the quality on which she chiefly prides her- 
self is the very one that nullifies her work. Originality is her 
great boast, an originality so pronounced as to refuse to base 
its deductions on the writings of previous thinkers. Her hus- 
band substantiates her claim. He says that all her philosophical 
fancies are spun out of her own brain, and that, if she does not 
use the technical terms of philosophers, it is because her lan- 
guage is her own too. She has scorned to talk with any “profest 
scholar” to learn his phraseology. “She did never impe her high- 
flying Phancies, with any old broken Fethers out of any uni- 
versity.”’ ! She says herself that she could never “afford board- 
room to other people’s ideas lest the legitimate offspring of her 
own brain should be crowded out.” 2 In Part IV, “On the Mo- 
tion of the Bodie,” we find that the Duchess has never studied 
anatomy, but this apparent disqualification does not prove in- 
hibitory. In An Epistle to the Reader she explains the situation: 


1 Philosophical and Physical Opinions, Duke of Newcastle’s “Epistle.” 
2 Ibid., “To the Reader.” 


IN ENGLAND FROM 1650 TO 1760 49 


I am to be pardoned, if I have not the names and tearms that the 
Anatomists have or use; or if I have mistaken some parts in the body, 
or misplaced any: for truly I never read of Anatomie, nor never saw 
any man opened, much less dissected, which for my better under- 
standing I would have done; but I found that neither the caurage of 
nature, nor the modesty of my sex would permit me. Werefore it 
would be a great chance, even to a wonder I should not erre in some; 
but I have seen the intrals of beasts, but never as they are placed in 
their bodies, but as they are cut out to be drest . . . which intrals I 
have heard are much like mans, especially a hogs, so that I know man 
hath a brain, a heart, a stomach, liver, lights, spleen, and the like; yet 
these I never viewed with a curious and searching eye, but as they 
have laien in some vessels; and as for bones, nerves, muscels, veines 
and the like, I know not how they are placed in the body, but as I 
have gathered several times from several relations, or discourses: here 
a bit and there a crum of knowledge, which my natural reason hath 
put together. 


From any modern standpoint of scientific excellence the in- 
accuracy and amazing self-confidence of these studies render 
them worse than futile. But it was not ignorance that was 
charged against the Duchess by her critics. The experimental 
method was having its triumphs, but doubtless a good deal of 
the scientific writing of the first half of the century was marked 
by a dogmatic tone and an uncertainty as to facts, so the 
Duchess was not attacked on that score. The common report 
that irritated the Duke of Newcastle to a spirited defense of 
his wife was that she could not have written these books, for 
“no lady could understand so many hard words.” The Duke 
takes up various kinds of hard words such as terms of divinity, 
philosophy, astronomy, and geometry, and shows that natural 
wit, common sense, and some observation could compass most 
of them. He gives the following account of the way he and the 
Duchess acquired a medical vocabulary: “But would you know 
the great Mystery of these Physical terms, I am almost 
ashamed to tell you; not that we have been ever sickly, but 
by melancholy often supposed ourselves to have such diseases 
as we had not, and learned Physitians were too wise to put us 


1 Philosophical and Physical Opinions, ‘‘To the Reader,” pp. 100-101. 


50 THE LEARNED LADY 


out of that humour, and so these terms cost us much more than 
they are worth, and I hope there is nobody so malicious as to 
envie us our bargain.” ! At the end of his Preface the Duke 
comes to what he considers the real cause of the aspersions on 
his Lady’s books: “‘But here’s the crime, a Lady writes them, 
and to intrench so much on the male prerogative, is not to be 
forgiven.” The Duchess, in her Address to the Two Universities, 
recurs to this idea. She hopes her book may be received 


for the good incouragement of our sex, lest in time we should grow irra- 
tional as idiots, by the dejectednesse of our spirits, through the care- 
lesse neglects, and despisements of the masculine sex to the effeminate, 
thinking it impossible we should have either learning or understand- 
ing, wit or judgement, as if we had not rational souls as well as men, 
and we out of a custom of dejectedness think so too, which makes us 
quit all industry towards profitable knowledge . . . so as we are be- 
come like worms that only live in the dull earth of ignorance, winding 
ourselves sometimes out, by the help of some refreshing rain of good 
educations which seldom is given us; for we are kept like birds in cages 
to hop up and down in our houses . . . we are shut out of all power, 
and Authority by reason we are never imployed either in civil nor 
marshall affaires, our counsels are despised, and laught at, the best 
of our actions are troden down with scorn, by the over-weaning con- 
ceit men have of themselves and through a despisement of us.? 


But she presents her book with some confidence to the univer- 
sities as places where are to be found right judgment and re- 
spectful civility. And at any rate she would rather “lie in- 
tombed under the dust of an University’ than be “worshipped 
by the Vulgar as a Deity.” 

One of the Duchess’s most curious books is Orations of 
Divers Sorts accommodated to Divers Places. Among the “ora- 
tions” is a “collection of speeches for a convivial meeting of 
country gentlemen in a market town, ending with “a speech of 
a quarter-drunk gentleman,’ and ‘a speech of a half-drunk 
gentleman.’ Another little collection headed ‘Female Ora- 
tions’ reports the speeches delivered at a meeting of women on 


1 Philosophical and Physical Opinions, Duke of Newcastle’s “Epistle.” 
2 Ibid., ‘Address to the Two Universities.” 


IN ENGLAND FROM 1650 TO 1760 51 


the great question of combining together to make themselves 
‘as free, happy, and famous as men.’” 4 

When the Duke and Duchess returned to England after 
the Restoration they lived for the most part at one of their 
country estates, but they made occasional visits to London. 
It was then that the Duchess’s beauty, wealth, eccentric dress 
and manners, and literary and scientific pretensions made her 
a conspicuous and, to some, a ridiculous figure. Sir Walter 
Scott, in Peveril of the Peak,? makes Charles II say of the Duch- 
ess, ““Her Grace is an entire raree-show in her own person — 
a universal masquerade — indeed a sort of private Bedlam 
hospital’’; and this sums up the attitude that found expression 
in the phrase, “Mad Madge of Newcastle.” In 1653 Dorothy 
Osborne wrote to Sir William Temple: “Let me ask you if you 
have seen a book of poems newly come out, made by my 
Lady Newcastle? For God’s sake if you meet with it send - 
it to me; they say *t is ten times more extravagant than 
her dress. Sure, the poor woman is a little distracted, she 
could never be so ridiculous as to venture at writing books, 
and in verse too.”’ A little later she wrote: “You need not 
send me Lady Newcastle’s book at all, for I have seen it, 
and am satisfied that there are many soberer people in Bed- 
lam.” ? Mrs. Evelyn called on the Duchess in 1667 and wrote 
to Mr. Bohun: 


I was surprised to find so much extravagancy and vanity in any per- 
son not confined within four walls. Her habit particular, fantastical, 
not unbecoming a good shape, which truly she may boast of. Her face 
discovers the facility of her sex, in being yet persuaded it deserves the 
esteem years forbid, by the infinite care she takes to place her curls 
and patches. Her mein surpasses the imagination of poets, or the 
descriptions of a romance heroine’s greatness: her gracious bows, sea- 
sonable nods, courteous stretching out of her hands, twinkling of her 
eyes, and various gestures of approbation, show what may be ex- 
pected from her discourse, which is as airy, empty, whimsical and 


1 Life of Duke and Duchess of Newcastle (ed. Frith), p. xxxi. 
2 Scott, Sir Walter: Peveril of the Peak, chap. xiv. 
3 Osborne, Dorothy: Letters (ed. Parry), pp. 92, 111. 


52 THE LEARNED LADY 


rambling as her books, aiming at science difficulties, high notions, 
terminating commonly in nonsense, oaths, and obscenity.! 

On May 30, 1667, the Duchess made a formal visit to the 
Royal Society, and Pepys says she was all admiration at the fine 
experiments they showed her, but he did not hear her say any- 
thing that was worth hearing. There had been much objection 
to admitting her to the rooms of the Society, some of the 
members fearing that the town would be “full of ballads of it,” 
but the visit seems to have passed off mildly and with the re- 
spectful observance to which she was accustomed. 

In spite of the stream of private criticism already indicated, 
the almost unmixed adulation of which the Duchess was the 
subject is indicated by the Letters and Poems, in Honour of the 
incomparable Princess Margaret, Dutchess of Newcastle, pub- 
lished in 1676, two years after her death. In her lifetime, too, 
the praise was equally extravagant. Resounding Latin titles, 
such as Illustrissima Heroina, Excellentissima Dux, Eminentis- 
sima Princeps, came to her from high sources. The Rector 
Magnificus of the University of Leyden called her not only 
Princeps feminini sexus, but Princeps terrarum. And the Vice- 
Chancellor of Cambridge in a complimentary address said that 
the great women of old could not contend with her for the palm 
of learning, but rather would they, with bent knee, adore 
this solam Margaretam Consumatissimam Principem. Even 
so sane a man as Evelyn wrote her a most flattering letter 
when she sent him her works in 1674. Beginning with Zenobia 

1 On swearing note the following extract from a sixteenth-century writer: 
“There is no regyon nor countrie that doth use more swearynge than is used in 
Englande, for a chyld that scarse can speake, a boy, a gyrle, a wenche, now-a-days 
wy] swere as great othes as an old knave and an old drabbe. . . . As for swearers 
a man nede not to seke for thym, for in the Kynges courte and lordes courtes 
in cities, borowes and in townes, and in every house, in maner there is abbomina- 
ble swerynge, and no man dothe go about to redresse it, but doth take swear- 
yng as for no sinne, which is a damnable synne; and they the which doth use 
it, be possessed of the Devill, and no man can helpe them but God and the 
Kynge.”’ (Hill, Georgiana: Women in English Life, vol. 1, p. 116.) 

See p. 317 for reprobation of “female swearers”’ in The Ladies’ Calling (1671). 


Swift’s Polite Conversation (1738) bears the same implication as to the manners 
of good society in the first quarter of the eighteenth century. 


MARGARET CAVENDISH, DUCHESS OF NEWCASTLE 


From an engraving in The Lives of William Cavendish, Duke of Newcastle, and of his wife 
Margaret, Duchess of Newcastle, edited by Mark Antony Lower, London, 1872 


IN ENGLAND FROM 1650 TO 1760 53 


he assembled the great women of ancient times, the learned 
ladies of more modern days in France, Spain, Italy, and Hol- 
land, and concluded with 


Mary de Gournay, & the famous Anna M. Schurman: and of our owne 
country, Queene Elizabeth, Queene Jane, the Lady Weston, Mrs. 
Philips our late Orinda, the daughters of St Tho: More; the Queene 
Christina of Sweden, & Elizabeth, daughter of a queen also to whom 
the renowned Des Cartes dedicated his learned worke, & the pro- 
found researches of his extraordinary talent. But all these, I say, 
sum’d together, possesse but that divided, which yr Grace retaines in 
one; so as Lucretia Marinella, who writ a book (in 1601) dell’ Ezcel- 
lenzia della Donne, con difetti é mancamenti de gli huomini, had no 
neede to have assembled so many instances and arguments to adorne 
the work, had she lived to be witnesse of Margarite, Dutchess of 
Newcastle, to have read her writings, & to have heard her discourse of 
the science she comprehended.! 


Praise could hardly go further. 

The best modern judgment discards the encomiums, but yet 
gives the Duchess a fairly high place. Sir Egerton Brydges, the 
editor of her Autobiography, says: 


That the Duchess was deficient in a cultivated judgment; that her 
knowledge was more multifarious than exact; and that her powers of 
fancy and sentiment were more active than her powers of reasoning, 
I will admit; but that her productions, mingled as they are with 
great absurdities, are wanting either in talent or in virtue, or even 
genius, I cannot concede.? 


The Duchess was buried in Westminster Abbey with this 
inscription on her monument: 


Here lies the loyal Duke of Newcastle and his Duchess, his sec- 
ond wife, by whom he had no issue. Her name was Margaret Lucas, 
youngest sister to Lord Lucas of Colchester, a noble family, for all 


1 The “Matchless Orinda”’ gives us an inkling of the way some of this praise 
should be discounted. It seems that Waller was reported to have said that he 
would give all his own poems to have been the author of a poem written by the 
Duchess of Newcastle. On being taxed with insincerity he answered that he 
could “do no less in Gallantry than be willing to devote all his own Papers to 
save the Reputation of a Lady, and keep her from the Disgrace of having 
written anything so ill.” (Letters from Orinda to Poliarchus, Letter x111.) 

_ ® Infe of the Duchess of Newcastle (ed. Brydges), “Critical Preface.” 


T 


54" THE LEARNED LADY 


the brothers were valliant, and all the sisters virtuous. This Duchess 
was a wise, witty, and learned Lady, which her many books do well 
testify; She was a most virtuous, and loving, and careful wife, and 
was with her Lord all the time of his banishment and miseries; and 
when they came home never parted with him in his solitary retire- 
ments. 


The two books by the Duchess that one would not willingly 
let die are her Life of her husband and her Autobiography. 
These are of permanent value as pictures of the life of a great, 
rich family like that of her girlhood home, and the straitened 
life in exile, with the later affluent and splendid life of a noble 
high in royal favor such as was the Duke of Newcastle. All the 
personal portions of both books are told with an air of genuine- 
ness, a naiveté, that make delightful reading. The Duchess 
summed up her life as that of a woman “honourably born, care- 
fully bred, and nobly married to a wise man,” and it was out 
of these happy domestic relations that her best work came. 


Contemporary with the Duchess of Newcastle was Kath- 
Mrs. Katherine  ¢Tine Fowler, better known as Mrs. Katherine 
Philips Philips, and better still as the “Matchless 
(a6ar 1604) Orinda.” She was the daughter of John Fowler, 
“an eminent merchant in Bucklersbury,” and Katherine Oxen- 
bridge. Aubrey gives a quaint account of her precocious child- 
hood as it was described to him by “her cosen Blacket who 
lived with her from her swadling cloutes till eight, and taught 
her to read.” Aubrey says: “ When a child she was mighty apt 
to learn, and . . . she had read the Bible through before she was 
full four yeares old; she could have sayed I know not how 
many places of Scripture and Chapters. She was a frequent 
hearer of sermons; had an excellent memory and could have 
brought away a sermon in her memory.” ! 

Her further education was carried on at Hackney at the 
school of “Mris Salmon, a famous schoolmistress, Presbyte- 
rian. ... Loved poetrey at schoole, and made verses there. 


1 Aubrey: Brief Lives, vol. 11, pp. 153-54. 


IN ENGLAND FROM 1650 TO 1760 55 


She takes after her grandmother Oxenbridge . . . who was an 
acquaintance of Mr. Francis Quarles, being much inclined to 
poetrie herself.” As a child Katherine evidently was as ardent 
a Presbyterian as her school-mistress and her Oxenbridge an- 
cestors. “She was very religiously devoted when she was 
young; prayed by herself an hower together, and tooke ser- 
mons verbatim when she was but ten yeares old. . . . She was 
when a child much against the bishops, prayd to God to take 
them to him, but afterwards was reconciled to them. Prayed 
aloud, as the hypocritical fashion then was, and was over- 
heared.” 

At sixteen she married Mr. James Philips, Esquire, of Car- 
digan Priory, Wales. Her published work includes numerous 
brief poems, most of them of a personal nature, two plays 
translated from the French, and several letters to Sir Charles 
Cotterell. This is rather scanty productivity to serve as a basis 
for the great vogue Mrs. Philips certainly had, nor to the 
modern reader does the quality of the work sufficiently ac- 
count for the enthusiasm it excited. Yet we have abundant 
testimony that the last ten years of her life were made brilliant 
by praise from the most authoritative sources. Sir Charles 
Cotterell, her intimate friend and the editor of her Works, 
said of her: “ We might well have call’d her the English Sappho, 
she of all the Poets of former Ages, being for her Verses and 
her Virtues both, the most highly valued; but she has call’d 
herself OnmyDA, a name that deserves to be added to the Muses, 
and to live with honour as long as they. Were our language as 
generally known to the world, as the Greek and Latin were 
anciently, or as the French is now, her Verses could not be 
confined within the limits of our Islands, but would spread 
themselves as far as the Continent has Inhabitants, or as the 
Seas have any Shore.” Something must be allowed here for 
the enthusiasm of a friend and an editor, but other estimates 
were almost as extreme. The Earl of Orrery had thought that 
the high praise of her poems at court must be exaggerated, but 
when he came to know her and her writings the court eulogies 


56 THE LEARNED LADY 


were to him but “Imperfect Trophies,” and he exclaimed, “If 
there be Helicon, in Wales it is.”” Henry Lawes and Dr. Cole- 
man, the best composers of the day, set some of her poems to 
music. Cowley in two poems to her praised her for her spirit 
“so rich, so noble, and so high,” her “inward Virtue,” her 
“well-knit Sence,” and for her poems in which were united all 
the excellences of both sexes. When her translation of Pompey 
appeared in the Smock-Alley Theater, Dublin, the Earl of 
Roscommon wrote the Prologue and Sir Edward Dering the 
Epilogue, and the success of the play was assured by the en- 
thusiastic support of the aristocracy of Dublin. In 1659 Jeremy 
Taylor dedicated to her his Discourse of the nature, offices and 
measures of friendship. Though she does not exactly fulfill the 
prophecy of Mr. Thomas Rowe, that “Orinda should be an 
ever-glorious name to ages yet to come,” yet her fame was 
by no means confined to her own brief day. We hear echoes of 
it far down in the eighteenth century. The highest praise that 
could be given to any woman poet was to bracket her with 
Orinda. 

By the nineteenth century her vogue was almost extinct, but 
chance appreciation came from an unexpected quarter. Keats 
wrote to Reynolds in September, 1817: ! 

The world, and especially our England, has, within the last thirty 
years, been vexed and teased by a set of Devils, whom I Detest so 
much that I almost hunger after an Acherontic promotion to a Tor- 
turer, purposely for their accomodation. These devils are a set of 
women, who having taken a snack or Luncheon of Literary scraps, 
set themselves up for towers of Babel in languages, Sapphos in Poetry, 
Euclids in Geometry, and everything in nothing. Among such the 
name of Montague has been preéminent. The thing has made a very 
uncomfortable impression on me. I had longed for some real feminine 
Modesty in these things, and was therefore gladdened in the extreme 
on opening the other day, one of Bailey’s Books — a book of poetry 
written by one beautiful Mrs. Philips, a friend of Jeremy Taylor’s 
and called “The Matchless Orinda” — you must have heard of her, 
and most likely read her Poetry —I wish you have not, that I may 
have the pleasure of treating you with a few stanzas. 


1 Keats, John: Letters to his Family and Friends, pp. 29-30. 


MRS. KATHERINE PHILIPS 


” 


“ From an original Picture in the Collection of her Grace the Dutchess of Dorset 
Drawn by J. Thurston. Engraved by W. Finden. From an engraving in 
Effigies Poeticae, London, 1824 


IN ENGLAND FROM 1650 TO 1760 57 


Whereupon he quotes the ten stanzas written by Orinda on 
parting with her friend “Rosania,”’ a poem of genuine feeling 
and quaintly charming in expression. “In other of her poems,” 
says Keats, “there is a most delicate fancy of the Fletcher 
kind — which we will con over together.” 

Thus the magic of Orinda’s name reasserts itself, and she is 
again praised as a lady of “delicate fancy,” “feminine mod- 
esty,” and unmatched in friendship. A reintroduction to a gen- 
eral public was given by Mr. Gosse’s delightful essay in Seven- 
teenth Century Studies (1885). And in 1904 a selection from her 
poems was published with an acute “Appreciation.” 

In her own day Orinda was not only prized as a poet, but she 
was considered the highest example, the prophet and expounder, 
of true friendship. Much of her verse was called forth by her 
Society of Friendship. The chief members of this circle were 
“Antenor” (Mr. Philips), “Lucasia” (Miss Anne Owen), 
“Rosania” (Miss Mary Aubrey), “Regina” (Mrs. John 
Collier), “Palemon” (Jeremy Taylor), “Silvander” (Sir 
Edward Dering), “Policrite” (Lady Margaret Cavendish), 
“Celimena” (Miss E. Boyl), “Cassandra” (Mrs. C. P., her 
dear sister), and “Critander” (Mr. J. B.). “Ardelia,” “Phillis,” 
and “Pastora” remain unidentified. There were doubtless 
others in the circle, but these we know because they all received 
poetical tributes from Orinda. There were over thirty-five pri- 
vate individuals intimately addressed in her poems. 

It is undoubtedly the personal character of her poems that 
secured her so wide and favorable an audience while her writ- 
ings were still in manuscript and known only as they passed 
from hand to hand. Each person addressed was the center 
of a new circle of readers. But the intimacy of the poems is one 
reason for the actual agony Orinda suffered when an unauthor- 
ized edition of her poems appeared in 1662. “Their Names 
expos’d in this Impression without their leave”? was the burden 
of her grief. And she was likewise injured in her modesty. The 
publication seemed to put her in the position of a woman bold 
and masculine enough to send her writings into the world. A 


58 THE LEARNED LADY 


thousand pounds, she says, would not have bought her consent. 
To Sir Charles Cotterell she wrote: 


To me (Sir) who never writ any line in my life with any intention 
to have it printed. . . . This is a most cruel accident, and hath made 
so proportionate an impression upon me, that really it hath cost me 
a sharp fit of sickness since I heard it. 


If the garbled version makes a true version a necessary repara- 
tion of the misfortune she. will yield, “but with the same re- 
luctancy as I would cut off a Limb to save my Life.” 


I am so far from expecting applause for anything I scribble, that 
I can hardly expect pardon; and sometimes I think that employment 
so far above my reach, and unfit for my Sex, that I am going to re- 
solve against it for ever; and could I have recovered those fugitive 
Papers that have escaped my hands, I had long since made a sacri- 
fice of them all. The truth is, I have an incorrigible inclination to that 
folly of riming, and intending the effects of that humour, only for 
my own amusement in a retir’d life; I did not so much resist it as a 
wiser woman would have done. 


She had been planning a visit to London, but she wrote in 
despair to Dorothy Osborne (then Mrs. Temple): 


I must never show my face there or among any reasonable people 
again, for some dishonest person hath got some collection of my 
Poems as I heare, and hath deliver’d them to a Printer who I heare is 
just upon putting them out and this hath soe extreamly disturbed 
me, both to have my private folly so unhandsomely exposed and ye 
belief that I believe the most part of ye world are apt enough to believe 
yt I connived at this ugly accident that I have been on ye rack ever 
since I heard it, though I have written to Col. Jeffries who first sent 
me word of it to get ye Printer punished, the book called in, and me 
someway publicly vindicated yet I shall need all my friends to be 
my champions to ye criticall and mallicious that I am soe innocent 
of this pittiful design of a knave to get a groat that I never was more 
vexed at anything and yt I utterly disclaim whatever he hath so un- 
handsomely expos’d. I know you have goodness and generosity 
enough to doe me right in your company and to give me your opinion 
too how I may best get this impression supressed and myself vindi- 


1 Philips, Mrs. Katherine: Letters from Orinda to Poliarchus, Letter Xv. 
This letter also appeared in the Preface to her Works in 1768. 


IN ENGLAND FROM 1650 TO 1760 59 


cated and therefore I will not beg your pardon for troubling you with 
this impertinent story.? 

Her pride of authorship would, however, almost certainly have 
triumphed over her modesty if she could have lived to see the 
sumptuous volume with its bravery of eulogistic verse in which 
Sir Charles Cotterell enshrined her work. Her letters to him, 
under the title Letters from Orinda to Poliarchus, were pub- 
lished in 1705 and add distinctly to her fame. 

On the whole, Orinda becomes a personage to us and an 
agreeable one. There is a note of sincerity through even her 
most unrestrained poems; the ardor of her affections is un- 
mistakable; her loyalty to the King, to her friends, to her ideas, 
is genuine. She does not labor compliments. Her praise pours 
forth from the abundance of her feeling. Perhaps one reason 
for her ready popularity was that she aroused no antagonisms. 
Though a literary woman there was nothing about her that was 
masculine, strident, or assertive. Her outlook on life was gra- 
cious and tolerant. She loved simplicity and retirement and 
was never dazzled by wealth or titles. 

At any rate, there is one interesting and significant fact about 
her and that is her success. It was a kind of success new in Eng- 
lish literary history. A woman without any commanding ad- 
vantages of birth or fortune, only moderately good-looking, 
without any compelling fascination, unstimulated by parental 
or tutorial ambitions, with but the scantiest schooling, married 
to an ordinary, rather dull man; a virtuous, sane, orderly, 
thrifty woman, excellent in business, housewifely, with no ec- 
centricities, simply follows her feelings in friendship and the 
bent of her mind towards authorship, and attains in a few 
years a position notably high. 


Two interesting young women who belong chronologically 
to this group are not exactly learned ladies, Mary North 
but they had intellectual piquancy and alert- (4: 1662) 
ness. One of them, Mary North, was the eldest of the four- 

1 Giffard, Lady: Her Life and Letters, p. 41. 


60 THE LEARNED LADY 


teen children of Dudley, the fourth Lord North. The mother 
of this large family was evidently a remarkable woman. Her 
son Roger says of her: “The Government of us was In generall 
severe, but tender; our mother maintained her authority, and 
yet condiscended to Entertain us. She was learned (for a lady) 
and Eloquent. Had much Knoledg of History and readyness 
of witt to express herself, in the part of Reproof, wherein she 
was fluent and pungent. . . . But without occasion given to the 
Contrary, she was debonair, familiar, and very liberall of hir 
discourse to entertain all.” This combination of the pungent 
and the debonair made an effective family discipline, for it was 
said that there was not a son or daughter whose abilities were 
not of a very high order, and that the daughters were hardly 
less cultured than their brothers. And of this group Mary was, 
says Roger, “by far the most brilliant —a woman of real 
genius.” A charming picture is given of the ladies of the North 
family, gathered together according to the custom of the time 
for endless tasks of tapestry and embroidery, listening en- 
tranced to Mary who recited romances for hours together, giv- 
ing not only the story, but the conversations, the substance of 
letters, and the general reflections. She had “a superiour wit, 
a prodigious memory, and was most agreeable.” “She imsti- 
tuted a sort of order of the wits of her time and acquaintance, 
whereof the symbol was a sun with a circle touching the rays, 
and upon that in blue ground were wrote atrdpxys in proper 
Greek characters, which her father suggested. Divers of these 
were made in silver and enamel, but in embroidery plenty, 
which were dispersed to those wittified ladies who were willing 
to come into their order; and for a while they were formally 
worn, until the foundress fell under the government of another, 
and then it was left off.””! Mary North was married to Sir 
William Spring of Pakenham and died in 1662 in her twenty- 
fourth year. Her feminine “Order of Intellect,” her quaint 
badge, “the symbol of a community of taste and interest in 
literature, science, and art,” ? offer an attractive and hope- 
1 The Lives of the Norths, vol. u1, p. 289. 2 Ibid., Editor’s Preface. 


IN ENGLAND FROM 1650 TO 1760 61 


ful prospect. It was an inconspicuous little organization, 
springing up gayly and spontaneously, and its scope of learn- 
ing may not have gone beyond the French romances the gifted 
young leader knew by heart, but it was at any rate an associa- 
tion of young women with some pronounced literary aspira- 
tions and tastes, and as such it stands out alone, a charming 
picture set in the framework of the anxious years before the 
Restoration. 


When Dorothy Osborne had been Lady Temple some years 
her husband wrote from London a “sweet scrip porothy Osborne, 
full of reproaches”’ at the businesslike tone and Lady Temple 
brevity of her letters. She answered with a ‘%627-7694) 
touch of her old sauciness: “Pray what did you expect I 
should have writ, tell me that I may know how to please you 
next time. But now I remember me you would have such let- 
ters as I used to write before we were marryed, there are a great 
many such in your cabinet yt I can send you if you please, 
but none in my head I can assure you.” ! 

The love letters thus preserved in Sir William Temple’s cab- 
inet have had a narrow escape from oblivion. They were found 
among the Temple papers when Mr. Courtenay was pre- 
paring his elaborate Life of Sir William Temple, and forty-two 
extracts from the letters were put by Mr. Courtenay apolo- 
getically in an appendix. He could not be sure that they would 
not seem trivial in comparison to matters of state. This book 
was published in 1836. Macaulay reviewed it in the Edinburgh 
Review for October, 1838, and took occasion to give a vivid 
sketch of Dorothy and her lover. Macaulay’s article led Mr. 
Edward Abbot Parry to read Courtenay’s extracts from the 
letters and to weave them together into a kind of story, which 
was published in April, 1886, in The English Illustrated Maga- 
zine. This magazine fell into the hands of Mrs. 8. R. Longe 
who had had access to the original letters and had copied them 
with minute accuracy. These letters were offered to Mr. Parry 

1 Giffard, Lady Martha: Her Life and Letters, p. 27. 


62 THE LEARNED LADY 


for publication and were accordingly brought out, though with 
omissions, in 1888.! In 1903 the letters were published in full. 
Thus, after escaping the vicissitudes of nearly two and a half 
centuries, these letters became a delight accessible to all.? 
When Dorothy was twenty-one she went with her brother to 
France. At the Isle of Wight they were joined by young Mr. 
William Temple who promptly. fell in love with Dorothy be- 
cause of the spirited way she met a difficult situation. Her 
brother had written on the window pane at the inn some 
phrases objectionable to the Puritans, and the whole party was 
arrested. Then Dorothy, relying upon the general chivalrous 
attitude towards women, took the blame upon herself, and 
they were set free. The courtship thus begun was destined to 
last seven years. There were few meetings and the correspond- 
ence was carried on with all possible secrecy, for both the Os- 
bornes and the Temples had other plans for the young people. 
It was a difficult seven years for Dorothy. The Osbornes lived 
at Chicksands Priory in Bedfordshire, a lonely and not very 
interesting region. Dorothy’s mother died in 1650. After a 
long illness, during which she was his constant attendant, her 
father died in 1654. During these years her brother was the 
only one of the family with her in the strange old house. And 
from him came her chief trial, for it was the effort of his life 
to see her well married. Young men, middle-aged men, old 
men, aspired to be Mistress Dorothy’s “servants.” The an- 
cient Priory saw a train of lovers sent away unsatisfied. Dor- 
othy gave all sorts of reasons for her fastidious and critical at- 


1 Osborne, Dorothy: Letters from Dorothy Osborne to Sir William Temple. 
“Tntroduction.” 

2 That the letters narrowly escaped destruction is indicated by the follow- 
ing letter written by Mrs. Sarah Osborne in 1770 to Sir George Osborne, 
Dorothy’s great-nephew: ‘“‘Mrs. Temple did lend me these letters to read with 
injunction not to shew them. I very much doubt if she would send them to 
London. . . . Most of these letters were in the tender stile with sensible senti- 
ments, indeed I believe Mrs. Temple burnt them after I had read them, she 
said she would, as indeed I think she should, such letters can never be exposed 
to advantage, there were many wrote after her marriage, they soon grew 
tame and flat to what was before.” 


IN ENGLAND FROM 1650 TO 1760 63 


titude towards her suitors — all reasons but the real one. Mr. 
Temple had no assured income, Dorothy but a small dowry, 
and no families in their rank of life could be expected to sanc- 
tion so imprudent a choice. In the meantime silence and faith- 
fulness was the only resource of the impecunious lovers. It 
was a hard fate, but not without compensations for later gen- 
erations, for if they had married happily on coming out of 
France there would have been no bundle of letters in the old 
cabinet at Sheen. 

There are various indications that Dorothy had numerous 
correspondents. That they did not save her letters is our great 
loss, for we can imagine few more delightful ways of being in- 
ducted into the life of the times than through the letters of 
Mistress Dorothy. The “Matchless Orinda” was one of her 
correspondents, but only one letter arising out of this friend- 
ship has been preserved. It may justly be quoted entire be- 
cause it serves to unite the two most interesting women of the 
time, and because it shows how Mrs. Philips, in the plentitude 
of her fame, with Dublin dramatic triumphs fresh upon her, 
with the aristocracy of London adding leaves to her laurel 
crown, courted the quiet Mrs. Temple living the most retired 
and domestic of lives at Sheen. This letter has the further 
pathetic interest of being one of the last Orinda wrote, for 
when she reached London on this visit she had so longed for 
she fell a victim to that most dreaded scourge, the small-pox: 

Deare Madam, — You treat me in your letters so much to my ad- 
vantage and above my merit that I am almost affray’d to tell you 
how exceedingly I am pleased with them lesst you should attribute 
yt contentment to ye delight I take in being praised whereas I am 
extreamely deceived if that be ye ground of it, though I confess it is 
not free from vanity. I can not choose but be proud of being owned 
by soe valuable a person as you are, and one whom all my inclinations 
carry me to honour and love at a very great rate, and you will find 
by the trouble I last gave you of this kind how impossible it will be for 
you to be rid of an importunity which you have much encourag’d and 
how much your late silence alarm’d one yt is soe much concern’d for 
ye honour you doe her in allowing her to hope you will frequently 
let her know she hath some room in ye particular favour, I hope you 


64 THE LEARNED LADY 


have pardon’d me that complaint and allow’d a little jealousy to 
that great passion I have for you and that I shall with some more as- 
surance come to thank you for this last favour of 12th instant, and 
must beg you to believe that if my convent were in Cataya and I a 
recluse by vow to it, yet I should never attain mortification enough to 
be able willingly to deny myself the great entertainment of your cor- 
respondance, which seems to remove me out of a solitary religious 
house on ye mountains and place me in the most advantageous pros- 
pect upon both court and town and give me right to a better place 
than of either, and that madam is your friendship, which is so great 
a present, that there is but one way to make it more valuable and yt 
is by making it less ceremonious and by using me with a freedom that 
may give me more access into your heart and this beg from you with 
a great earnestness, and will promise you that whatsoever liberties 
of that kind you allow me, yt I will never so much abase that goodness 
as to press mine own advantages further than you shall permit or 
lessen any of the respect I ow you, by the less formal approaches I de- 
sire to make to you who though I esteem above most of the world yet 
I love yet more.! 


Orinda was a letter-writer of no mean ability herself, but she 
wrote with something of a professional tone, and possibly with 
an eye to numerous readers. It was only Dorothy that could 
make town and court live again. Macaulay’s philippics against 
“the dignity of history”’ and his eulogy of the social value of 
such letters as Dorothy’s must find approval from every one 
who tries to revivify a forgotten era. Dorothy was an acute 
observer. If the novel of domestic life had been in existence 
in her day she would have found the natural place for her clever 
and slightly caustic pen. The successive suitors and various 
dull visitors at Chicksands could have had little suspicion of 
the merry and facile wit that was serving up their oddities for 
the amusement of her lover. Furthermore, Dorothy was an in- 
veterate reader, and a reader with mental reactions, an inde- 
pendent judgment, and a skill in witty comment. The general 
tone of the letters is a delightful mixture of humor, tenderness, 
and coquetry. No writing of the time was more unaffectedly 
human. And there were counsels of prudence and of good sense, 


1 Giffard, Lady: Her Life and Letters, pp. 38-39. 


IN ENGLAND FROM 1650 TO 1760 65 


bits of worldly wisdom and penetrating knowledge of human 
foibles. And with it all was the charm of style. When Mr. 
Temple wishes to know how she spends her day she outlines 


the slow-moving hours and closes with this delicate picture of 
evening: 

The heat of the day is spent in reading or working, and about six 
or seven o'clock I walk out into a common that lies hard by the 
house, where a great many young wenches keep sheep and cows, and 
sit in the shade singing of ballads. I go to them and compare their 
voices and beauties to some ancient shepherdesses that I have read 
of, and find a vast difference there: but, trust me, I think these are as 
innocent as those could be. I talk to them and find they want nothing 
to make them the happiest people in the world but the knowledge 
that they are so. Most commonly when we are in the midst of our 
discourse, one looks about her, and spies her cows going into the corn, 
and then away they all run as if they had wings to their heels. I, that 
am not so nimble, stay behind; and when I see them driving home 
their cattle, I think ’t is time for me to return too. When I have supped, 
I go into the garden, and so to the side of a small river that runs by 
it, when I sit down and wish you were with me (you had best say this 
is not kind neither). In earnest, ’t is a pleasant place, and would be 
much more so to me if I had your company. I sit there sometimes 
till I am lost with thinking; and were it not for some cruel thoughts 
of the crossness of our fortunes that will not let me sleep there, I should 
forget that there were such a thing to be done as going to bed.! 


Dorothy’s easy, natural tone was quite in accord with her 
theory of letter-writing. She writes to Mr. Temple: 


All letters, methinks, should be free and easy as one’s discourse, 
not studied like an oration, nor made up of hard words like a charm. 
*T is an admirable thing to see how some people will labour to find 
terms that will obscure a plain sense, like a gentleman I knew who 
would never say “‘the weather grew cold,” but that “winter begins to 
salute us.” I have no patience for such coxcombs, and cannot blame 
an old uncle of mine who threw the standish at his man’s head because 
he writ a letter for him, where instead of saying (as his master bid 
him) that “he had the gout in his hand” he said “that the gout would 
not permit him to put pen to paper.” The fellow thought he had 
mended it mightily, and that putting pen to paper was much better 
than plain writing! 


1 Letters from Dorothy Osborne to Sir William Temple, p. 100. 


66 THE LEARNED LADY 


How in 1652-54 did Dorothy escape the grand style? She 
was steeped in romances and she read Jeremy Taylor with de- 
light. But there are no preciosities, no attempted elaborate- 
ness or ornamentation or splendor in her style. She might 
have written after the moderns had won their victory so 
direct and straightforward is her speech. But the infinite 
charm of her letters belongs to no age. It is the expression 
of a personality. 

We cannot leave Dorothy Osborne’s letters without feeling 
defrauded that there are so few of them. After their marriage 
in 1655 the Temples lived five years in Ireland. Sir William’s 
importance in state affairs led to a later residence in Brussels 
and at The Hague. After 1681 they lived in retirement at 
Moor Park and Swift and Stella were of their household. 
What opportunities for letters if Dorothy had only been as 
indefatigable as Lady Mary Wortley Montagu! But except 
for a few personal notes from Sheen in 1665-67, Dorothy fades 
from our sight. Did accumulated sorrows sap her energy and 
dim her joyous courage? She had nine children. Seven of them 
died in infancy. Her daughter died of small-pox. Her son 
committed suicide because of fancied inability to perform a 
diplomatic mission. It is said that at some time during the 
years 1689-94 Queen Mary and Dorothy kept up a continuous 
correspondence. If such letters were written there is now no 
trace of them. The latest published letter from Dorothy is in 
1689 in response to some expression of condolence for the death 
of her son. It is difficult to recognize in this subdued and digni- 
fied, almost cold and stately lady, the sparkling and mischiev- 
ous Dorothy of the earlier letters. 


Just about contemporary with Mrs. Philips and the Duchess 
Lady Pakington of Newcastle was a remarkable woman of quite 
(d..1679) another type. This was Lady Pakington, the 
daughter of Lord Coventry. If, as was long supposed, she 
wrote the series of books of which The Whole Duty of Man was 
one, that fact would place her very high in the ranks of seven- 


IN ENGLAND FROM 1650 TO 1760 67 


teenth-century authors. With the consensus of expert opinion 
now against the ascription of these books to her, she yet holds 
an important place among learned women.! Dr. George Hickes, 
whose deanery was near Westwood, the home of Sir John Pak- 
ington, and who was intimate with the family, in the Preface 
to his Thesaurus which was inscribed to Sir John, gives a “char- 
acter” of Lady Pakington in which he says she was trained in 
her youth by “the excellently learned Sir Norton Knatchbull,” 
and that later in life she was mistress of all the learning, good 
judgment, sound thinking, and piety necessary to have been 
the author of the famous Whole Duty of Man. He says that 
noted divines declared her as learned in the history of pagan 
and Christian systems of thought as were they themselves; and 
that she knew concerning the antiquities of her own county 
“almost as much as the greatest proficients in that kind of 
knowledge.” Especially did Dr. Hickes comment on her “tal- 
ent for speaking correctly, pertinently, clearly, and gracefully,” 
and on “her evenness of style and consistent manner of writ- 
ing.”” No woman of the period came nearer being the tutelary 
deity of a coterie than did Lady Pakington. Her loyalty to the 
Church of England and to the Stuart cause made of her beauti- 
ful home at Westwood during the Protectorate a natural re- 
sort for royalist divines. Dr. Hammond, Bishop Fell, Bishop 
Morley, Bishop Pearson, Bishop Henchman, Bishop Gunning, 
were among those whose friendship and esteem she had ac- 
quired by her “great virtues and eminent attainments in know!l- 
edge.” Before the Restoration she held a kind of Church of 
England salon, and though most of the men who frequented 
it were given benefices by Charles II and so scattered through 
England, Lady Pakington, by letter and occasional personal 
intercourse, kept up the friendships of the earlier days, through 
the nineteen years that she lived after the Restoration. And 
even if she did not write The Whole Duty of Man (1657) and the 
series that followed it, these books arose from the discussions 
held at Westwood. 
1 Ballard gives the arguments in favor of Lady Pakington. 


68 THE LEARNED LADY 


The Countess of Warwick is best known from her Diary, 
Mary Boyle, the her Autobiography, and the sermon preached 
Countess of War- at her funeral by Dr. Anthony Walker, rector 
wick (1624-1678) ¢ Pyfield in Essex. The Diary was kept from 
July, 1666, till 1678. The part from 1666 to 1672 was pub- 
lished in 1847 by the Religious Tract Society with a memoir. 
The remainder is among the manuscripts in the British Mu- 
seum.! Her Autobiography, under the title, Some Specialties 
in the Life of M. Warwicke, was published by the Percy So- 
ciety in 1848.2 Dr. Walker’s sermon, entitled The Virtuous 
Woman found, her loss bewailed, and character exemplified, etc., 
was published in 1678 and 1687.8 

Mary Boyle was married to Mr. Rich, afterwards Earl of 
Warwick, when she was but fifteen. Her life before that time 
she thus describes: “I was married into my husband’s family, 
as vain, as idle, and as inconsiderate a person as possible, mind- 
ing nothing but curious dressing and fond and rich clothes, and 
spending my precious time in nothing else but reading romances, 
and in reading and seeing plays, and in going to court, and Hide 
Park and Spring Garden; and I was so fond of the court, that 
I had taken a secret resolution that if my father died, and I 
was mistress of myself, I would become a courtier.” * But by 
the time she was twenty-one a complete change was manifest. 
She became exceedingly devout. There is no more romance 
reading. The books on her chosen list are “St. Bernard, George 
Herbert, Jeremy Taylor, Baxter, Samuel Rutherford Clarke, 
the Confessions of St. Augustine, John Janeway’s Dying, 
Foxe’s Book of Martyrs, Cayley’s Glimpses of Eternity.” ® Her 
writing was all religious in tone. Rules for a Holy Life, Occa- 
sional Meditations, and Pious Reflections were among the 
topics she found most congenial. The Specialties in the Life of 

1 Johnstone, Grace: Leading Women of the Restoration, p. 101. 

2 Percy Society Publications, vol. xx1t. See also biographies of the feaini 
of Warwick by C. Fell Smith (1901) and Mary Palgrave (1901). 

3 Term Catalogues. 


4 Autobiography (Percy Society Publications, vol. xx, p. 21). 
5 Godfrey, Elizabeth: Social Life under the Stuarts, p. 138. 


IN ENGLAND FROM 1650 TO 1760 69 


M. Warwicke shows the intensity of her struggle after spiritual 
perfection and her genuine aloofness from the gay and splen- 
did scenes in which her rank compelled her to bear a part. 
The most ordinary occurrences, such as “lighting many can- 
dles at once,” or “drawing the window-curtains to prevent the 
sun’s putting out the fire,’ suggested pious reflections. At a 
glorious banquet at Whitehall “the trumpets sounding in the 
midst of all that great show”’ put mortifying thoughts into her 
mind and made her consider “what if the trump of God should 
now sound?” In a meditation entitled “Upon looking out of 
my window at Chelsea, upon the Thames,” her delight in the 
sweet river when it is calm and serene, and her dislike of it — 
so that she shut her window and ceased to look — when it was 
rough, is moralized into the charm of calm and patient people 
as against those of turbulent passions.! 

Lady Warwick’s writings exhibit none of the joyous or fer- 
vent aspects of religion. In the midst of domestic trials, sur- 
rounded by an alien life, she was steadily tutoring her own 
heart, subduing her sins, following a high ideal. Dr. Walker in 
his sermon gives an example of seventeenth-century pulpit 
oratory in his effort adequately to praise this great lady, as 
conspicuous for goodness as for her rank and wealth: “An hun- 
dred mouths, and a thousand tongues though they all flowed 
with nectar, would be too few to praise her.” “Oh,” he ex- 
claims, “for a Chrysostom’s mouth, for an angel’s tongue, to 
describe this terrestrial seraphine; or a ray of light condensed 
into a pencil, and made tactile, to give you this glorious child 
of light in viva effigie.” 


That Lucy Hutchinson had written a life of her husband was 
known by many people and there were frequent yucy Apsley, 
requests in the eighteenth century that so valu- Mrs. Hutchinson 
able a historical document should be made ac- “%? ? ) 
cessible to the public. Mrs. Catherine Macaulay was one of 
those urgent in this matter, but without avail.? It was not till. 


1 Johnstone, Grace: Leading Women of the Restoration, pp. 107, 117. 
2 Memoirs of Colonel Hutchinson (Bohn ed.), Preface, p. ix. 


70 THE LEARNED LADY 


the manuscript came into the possession of the Reverend 
Julius Hutchinson that it was published. After the first edition 
in 1806 three editions appeared in four years. Some other 
writings besides the Memoirs were found among the papers of 
Mrs. Hutchinson. Of these the precious Autobiography was 
but a fragment. It not only closed abruptly, but leaves had 
been torn out. But from what remains we get one of the few 
accounts of the home education of girls in the first half of the 
seventeenth century. Her father and mother, extremely glad 
to welcome a girl after three sons, “applied all their cares and 
spared no cost” in her education. She describes this education 
as follows: 


By the time I was four years old I read English perfectly, and hay- 
ing a great memory, I was carried to sermons; and while I was very 
young could remember and repeat them exactly, and being caressed, 
the love of praise tickled me, and made me attend more heedfully. 
When I was about seven years of age, I remember I had at one time 
eight tutors in several qualities, languages, music, dancing, writing and 
needle-work; but my genius was quite averse from all but my book, 
and that I was so eager of, that my mother, thinking it prejudiced my 
health, would moderate me in it; yet this rather animated me than 
kept me back, and every moment I could steal from my play I would 
employ in any book I could find, when my own were locked up from 
me. After dinner and supper I still had an hour allowed me to play, 
and then I would steal into some hole or other to read. My father 
would have me learn Latin, and I was so apt that I outstripped my 
brothers who were at school, although my father’s chaplain, that was 
my tutor was a pitiful dull fellow. My brothers, who had a great deal 
of wit, had some emulation at the progress I made in my learning, 
which very well pleased my father; though my mother would have 
been contented if I had not so wholly addicted myself to that as to 
neglect my other qualities. As for music and dancing, I profited very 
little in them, and would never practise my lute or harpsichords but 
when my masters were with me; and for my needle I absolutely hated 
it. Play among other children I despised, and when I was forced to 
entertain such as came to visit me, I tired them with more grave in- 
structions than their mothers, and plucked all their babies to pieces, 
and kept the children in such awe, that they were glad when I enter- 
tained myself with elder company; to whom I was very acceptable, 
and living in the house with many persons that had a great deal of 


MRS. LUCY HUTCHINSON AND HER SON 
From an engraving in Memoirs of the Life of Colonel Hutchinson, 1808 


IN ENGLAND FROM 1650 TO 1760 71 


wit, and very profitable serious discourses being frequent at my father’s 
table and in my mother’s drawing-room, I was very attentive to all, 
and gathered up things that I would utter again, to great admiration 
of many that took my memory and imitation for wit. It pleased God 
that, through the good instructions of my mother, and the sermons she 
carried me to, I was convinced that the knowledge of God was the 
most excellent study, and accordingly applied myself to it, and to prac- 
tise as I was taught. I used to exhort my mother’s maids much, and 
to turn their idle discourses to good subjects: but I thought, when I 
had done this on the Lord’s day, and every day performed my due 
tasks of reading and praying, that then I was free to anything that 
was not sin. 


Elsewhere she notes other elements of her education. She 
says that as soon as she was weaned, a Frenchwoman was taken 
to be her dry-nurse and she was taught to speak French and 
English together. At the siege of Nottingham Castle Mrs. 
Hutchinson is represented as acting the part of a surgeon. 
This knowledge may doubtless be referred to instructions by 
her mother. Sir Allen Apsley, Lucy’s father, was lieutenant 
of the Tower of London during her youth, and Mrs. Apsley 
was very generous and humane to the prisoners. Her daughter 
says of her: 

What my father allowed her she spent not in vanities, although she 
had what was rich and requisite upon occasions, but she laid most of 
it out in pious and charitable uses. Sir Walter Raleigh and Mr. Ruthin 
being prisoners in the Tower, and addicting themselves to chemistry, 
she suffered them to make rare experiments at her cost, partly to 
comfort and divert the poor prisoners, and partly to gain the knowl- 
edge of their experiments, and the medicines to help such poor people 
as were not able to seek physicians. By these means she acquired a 
great deal of skill, which was very profitable to many all her life.? 


The love story of Lucy Apsley and Colonel Hutchinson is 
curiously interwoven with her learning. When Lucy was six- 
teen her mother took her into Wiltshire in pursuance of a con- 
templated marriage contract and left a younger sister at a 
house where she was “tabled for the practice of her lute.” 


1 Hutchinson, Mrs. Lucy: Memoirs of Colonel Hutchinson, p. 16. 
2 Memoirs of Colonel Hutchinson, p. 14. 


72 THE LEARNED LADY 


Mr. Hutchinson, “tabled” at the same house, was attracted 
by the vivacious child, and frequently accompanied her when 
she went over to her mother’s house. On one of these occasions 
he saw some Latin books and was much interested to find that 
they belonged to Lucy. Then he heard that this Lucy was 
“reserved and studious,” then that she composed songs above 
“the ordinary reach of a she-wit,” then that she had “sense 
above the rest,” but that she “shunned the converse of men 
as a plague.” Strangely enough, these accounts, or some magic, 
or the hand of Providence, plunged Mr. Hutchinson into the 
despairs and ardors of love even before he had seen the lady. 
On her return, the proposed marriage contract not having been 
completed, he daily frequented her mother’s house, and for six 
weeks “in the sweet season of the spring” they had oppor- 
tunity for converse with each other. During this period some 
envious ladies endeavored to break the friendship by telling 
him that Lucy neglected her dress and all womanish ornaments, 
giving herself up wholly to study and writing. But since his 
love had owed its inception to a sight of her Latin books, and 
had been stimulated by hearing her poetry, these insinuations 
did not interfere with what his wife calls “a more handsome 
management of love than the best romances describe.” ! 
Somewhat later Lucy Hutchinson’s love of learning led her 
to at least a slight knowledge of Greek and Hebrew. That she 
kept up her Latin is shown by the fact that she translated 
part of the 4ineid. In her early married life she found scholas- 
tic means to mitigate the monotony of the needlework she 
loathed. Out of a “youthful curiosity to understand things she 
had heard so much of at second-hand” she translated six 
books of Lucretius into verse, accomplishing this task, she says, 
“in a room where my children practised the several qualities 
they were taught with their tutors, and I numbered the sylla- 
bles of my translation by the threads of the canvas I wrought 
in, and set them down with a pen and ink that stood by me.” 
There was not, however, in Mrs. Hutchinson’s life much op- 
4 Memoirs of Colonel Hutchinson, pp. 56-62. 


IN ENGLAND FROM 1650 TO 1760 73 


portunity for scenes so domestic as this. She was married to 
Mr. Hutchinson in 1638. By 1642 her husband was definitely 
committed to the side of the Puritans, and the rest of their life 
till his death in 1664 was one of anxiety, conflict, and baffled 
high endeavor. But it was also a life of achievement and ex- 
citement, and constantly sweetened and stimulated by extra- 
ordinary affection between husband and wife. When at his 
death she retired to the family home at Owthorpe the days 
must have looked very blank and empty to the heroine of Not- 
tingham Castle. Not even the care of her eight children could 
keep her mind from dwelling on the past. The message her 
husband sent her from his death-bed in the prison, “Let her, 
as she is above other women, show herself, on this occasion, a 
good Christian, and above other women,”! helped her to 
restrain extreme signs of grief, but her heart and mind were 
with him. And the mechanic exercise that dulled her grief 
was the writing of his Life. She had kept a rough sort of diary 
and this was the basis for the longer work. The writing was 
done between 1664 and 1671 when Mrs. Hutchinson herself 
died. The work was addressed “To my Children” and its pur- 
pose was to make them know the character and deeds of their 
father. But the narrative goes much farther than that. It is 
a minute account of the persons and events of that portion of 
the Civil War especially connected with Nottingham. She 
writes as an eye-witness and a participant. She wields a pen 
vigorous, racy, and unafraid. She had a genius for picturesque 
characterization, and her scornful descriptions of cowards and 
traitors are veiled by no feminine softness of phrase. When 
describing such treacherous members of the Parliament Party 
as Charles White and Chadwick and his wife her vocabulary 
of abuse is unstinted. But she is equally fluent in her account 
of heroes such as Colonel Thornhagh. The intrigues, the fac- 
tions, the cross-currents, within the Puritan Party are as 
minutely analyzed and laid open as is the general contest be- 
tween King and Parliament. Furthermore, the book is read- 
1 Memoirs of Colonel Hutchinson, p. 478. 


74 THE LEARNED LADY 


able from beginning to end. It moves with the rapidity of a 
novel of adventure. Mr. A. H. Upham! has analyzed Mrs. 
Hutchinson’s work to show that it was probably suggested by 
the Duchess of Newcastle’s Life of her husband, and that, 
further, the general plan and even the choice of detail were 
guided by the Duchess’s Memoir. The Life of the Duke of New- 
castle, though not published till 1667, was written in 1665, and 
since the two families were neighbors, and knew each other 
well, it might easily be that Mrs. Hutchinson was acquainted 
with the work of the Duchess in manuscript. This ingenious 
theory is maintained by citations of passages showing numer- 
ous similarities. But the fact remains that Mrs. Hutchinson’s 
Memoir moves forward as from the force of an original impulse, 
nobly religious, shrewd, caustic, affectionate, and naive. It 
was, in subject-matter and style, a notable achievement, and 
while succeeding in the amplest measure in its Purpose of 
exalting Colonel Hutchinson’s memory, quite as deservedly 
gives to Mrs. Hutchinson her own unsought and higher pinnacle 
of fame. 


A few years before her death Lady Fanshawe wrote for her 
Ann Harrison, | S00 @ narrative of her life. Of her own educa- 
Lady Fanshawe _ tion she says: “‘ Now it is necessary to say some- 
(re25-20Ro) thing of my mother’s education of me, which 
was with all the advantages that time afforded, both for work- 
ing all sorts of fine works with my needle, and learning French, 
singing, (the) lute, the virginals, and dancing; and, notwith- 
standing I learned as well as most did, yet I was wild to that 
degree that the hours of my beloved recreation took up too 
much of my time; for I loved riding in the first place, and run- 
ning, and all active pastimes; and in fine I was what we graver 
people call a hoyting girl. But to be just to myself I never 
did mischief to myself or other people, nor one immodest 
action or word in my life; but skipping and activity was my 
delight. But upon my mother’s death and as an offering to 

1 Anglia: vol. 36, ““Lucy Hutchinson and the Duchess of Newcastle.” 


LADY FANSHAWE 
From an engraving in Memoirs of Lady Fanshawe, London, 1830 


IN ENGLAND FROM 1650 TO 1760 75 


her memory I flung away those little childishnesses that for- 
merly possessed me and by my father’s command took upon 
me the charge of his house and family, which I so ordered by 
my excellent mother’s example as found acceptance in his 
sight.” ! At her mother’s death Ann was “fifteen years and 
three months ” old, and the household she took charge of was 
one “of plenty and hospitality,” her father having a very 
great estate. In 1644 she married Sir Richard Fanshawe to 
whom she was passionately devoted during the twenty-six 
troubled years of their life together. She says: “Glory be to 
God, we never had but one mind throughout our lives, our 
souls were wrapped up in each other, our aims and designs 
one, and our resentments one. We so studied one the other 
that we knew each other’s mind by our looks; whatever was 
real happiness God gave it me in him.” ? 

When Lady Fanshawe wrote her Memoirs, her son Richard, 
her youngest child, was about ten or twelve years old. Her 
purpose apparently was to recount all the facts of the eventful 
family career. The narrative, except for an occasional out- 
burst, was uncolored by emotion. One series of events re- 
corded is the births and deaths of children. In a period of 
twenty years Lady Fanshawe had fourteen children and she 
records the deaths of nine of them. This would seem to be 
suffering and sorrow enough for one life. But we get an added 
conception of the family vicissitudes when we discover that no 
two of the fourteen children were born in the same house, and 
no two of the nine who died were buried in the same church- 
yard. Madrid, Lisbon, Paris, Yorkshire, Kent, Hertfordshire, 
Oxford, were places of sad memory to the bereaved mother. 
Yet, except in the cases of “little Nan” and the first Richard, 
there is simply a recital of facts and dates. Lady Fanshawe 
was but fifty-five when she died, but she had gone through so 
much that a re-living of past emotions as well as a recalling of 
facts would have made the writing of the Memoirs an impos- 


1 The Memoirs of Ann, Lady Fanshawe, 1600-1672, p. 22. 
2 Tbid., p. 5. 


76 THE LEARNED LADY 


sibility. As a narrative of the externals of life the story has sin- 
gular interest. It abounds in striking contrasts. Money strin- 
gency, mishaps by land and sea, sicknesses, imprisonments, 
deaths, mingle strangely with official splendors, royal gifts, 
rich furnishings, gorgeous apparel. It is personal in tone, with 
as little historical detail as was consistent with carrying the 
narrative forward. And for that reason it is of importance to- 
day as a closer record of life than historians of the Civil War 
or of the reign of Charles II are likely to give. 

The most interesting personality in this early group is the 


Margasct beautiful Mrs.! Margaret Blagge. She is the 
Mrs, Godolphin supreme example of a developed religious sense 
(1652-1678) in the court of Charles II. She was not driven 


to a life of devotion through a grief-enshrouded heart. Reli- 


1 The use of “‘Miss’’ and “‘Mrs.” between 1660 and 1750, and even later, 
is often confusing. The use of ‘‘ Mrs.” for all reputable persons of the female 
sex, even children, prevailed during the seventeenth and into the eighteenth 
century. On the tombstone of Milton’s daughter, a child under six months 
we read, “1657. Mar. 20. Mrs. Kathern Milton.” (Notes and Queries, 7th 
Series, vol. v1, p. 494.) A Continuation of Sir Philip Sidney's Arcadia, Written. 
by a Young Gentlewoman, Miss A. W. (1651, 2d edition, 1690), is a striking ex- 
ception. There was sometimes a distinction between the married and the un- 
married in that the latter had the Christian name after the “Mrs.” as when 
Evelyn speaks of “‘ Mrs. Margaret Blagge,” but this custom was by no means in- 
variable. The prefix “Miss” began soon after the Restoration to be used as 
a term of reproach. January 9, 1662, Evelyn says of Roxalana, “She being 
taken to be ye Earl of Oxford’s Misse (as at this time they began to call lewd 
women).” In 1669 Flecknoe, in Epigrams of All Sorts, wrote a poem to Mary 
Davis, the King’s mistress, under the title ““To Miss Davis.”’ In 1675 appeared 
“The ‘Miss’ displayed; with all her Wheadling Arts and circumventions, By 
the Author of the First Part of the ‘English Rogue.” In 1683, in Miss Barber’s 
Poems, was a poem entitled “To the Town Miss,” and in one of her novels 
(about 1715) she speaks of the “‘Town Miss” who pretends to modesty. In 
1690 we find the Dutch Whore, or, the Miss of Amsterdam. — 

“Miss” in a reputable sense belonged to very young girls. In 1675 Lady 
Russell speaks of her daughter Rachel, who was then four years old, as “‘our 
Miss.”’ When the little girl is thirteen her grandfather calls her “Mrs. Rachel.” 
(Lady Russell’s Letters, vol. 1, pp. 14, 139.) In 1723, in The Gentleman In- 
structed, we read “As soon as Reason begins to sparkle, Miss is led to the 
drawing-room.” The proper age for “‘Miss” seems a little advanced in two 
quotations made by Mr. Aitkin (Life of Steele, vol. 1, p. 162) from Lillie’s 
Original and Genuine Leiters sent to the Tatler and Spectator. One young lady 
says: “Being arrived at sixteen I have left the boarding-school, and now 


IN ENGLAND FROM 1650 TO 1760 ri 


gion was to her joy and ecstasy. John Evelyn recorded in his 
Diary a determination to consecrate the worthy life of Mar- 
garet Blagge to posterity, and when he died in 1706 he left a 
list of “things I would write out fair and reform if I had lei- 
sure,” among them being the Life of Mrs. Godolphin. This 
manuscript was first published in 1847. It records a life of sin- 
gular charm and interest. Yet the facts of Margaret Blagge’s 
life are meager enough. She was born in 1652; was early in 
France with the Countess of Guildford; when scarcely twelve 
became maid of honor to the Duchess of York; and then on the 
death of the Duchess in 1671 entered into the same service with 
Queen Catherine; in 1674, after a nine-year courtship, married 
Sidney Godolphin; and in 1678 died in child-birth. It is her inner 
life that counts, and that life would have left small record had 


having assumed the title of Madam instead of Miss am come home.” A second 
quotation seems to indicate a still further extension of the proper age for Miss; 
“Let no woman after the known age of twenty-one presume to admit of her 
being called Miss unless she can fairly prove she is not out of her sampler.” 

Actresses were usually called “Mrs.” in the bills. The first use of “Miss” 
that I can find is in 1685 in D’Urfey’s Commonwealth of Women, where a part 
was played by “Miss Nanny” (Genest: Some Account of the English Stage, 
vol. 1, p. 443). In D’Urfey’s Don Quirote Altesidora was played by “Miss 
Cross.’ Genest (vol. u, p. 70) says: “She was called Miss because she was 
quite a girl ...she was afterwards called Mrs. Cross... the case was the 
same with several other actresses — Cibber in The Lady’s Last Stake calls two 
of the female characters Miss Notable and Mrs. Conquest, tho’ they are both 
unmarried — but one is a girl and the other a woman.” “Miss Cross” was 
“Mrs.” on the bills within a year. ““Miss Younger” came into the house at - 
seven years old. Later she became “Mrs. Younger.” So with Miss Mount- 
fort, Miss Santlow, Miss Sherburn, Miss Booth, Miss Rogers, and other young 
actresses who entered the theatrical profession between 1700-1715. 

By 1750 “Miss” for unmarried women is pretty well established. The list 
of subscribers to Ballard’s Memoirs (1752) contains many ladies called “‘ Miss.” 
The Connoisseur, November 25, 1754, said: “Every unmarried woman is now 
called ‘Miss.’” But ‘‘Mrs.” for reputable unmarried women beyond girlhood 
was occasionally used through the century. Elizabeth Carter was always “Mrs. 
Carter,” while her friend Catharine Talbot, about the same age, was “Miss 
Talbot.” In Humphrey Clinker (1771) Tabitha Bramble, though a spinster, 
is “Mrs.” Sir Walter Scott called Joanna Baillie “Mrs.” in the beginning of 
the nineteenth century. Noies and Queries (7th Series, vol. vm, pp. 104-256) 
calls attention to the fact that as late as 1889 “‘ Mrs.” was in many places con- 
sidered the correct title for upper-class unmarried female servants. 


78 THE LEARNED LADY 


not the beautiful young maid of honor chosen the wise and 
religious John Evelyn as her friendly counselor in her difficult 
attempt to maintain a life of purity and piety in the most dis- 
solute court of Europe. Evelyn recounts the success of her de- 
vout life in these words: “‘Arethusa pass’d through all those 
turbulent waters without soe much as the least staine or tine- 
ture in her Chrystall; with her Piety grew up her Witt, which 
was soe sparkling, accompanyed with a Judgment and Elo- 
quence so exterordinary, a Beauty and Ayre soe charmeing 
and lovely, in a word, an Address soe universally takeing, that, 
after a few years, the Court never saw or had seen such a Con- 
stellation of perfections amongst all their splendid Circles.” 4 

But though she was regarded as “a little miracle” at court, 
her heart was never there. To no young woman of the time 
were the pomp and glory of the world more alluringly open, 
but she turned instinctively from all such joys. She counted 
her beauty a snare and would never “trick and dress herself 
vpp ... to be fine and ador’d.”’ Lovers crowded about her, but 
she avoided the vain converse of gallants. Evelyn records her 
particular gift for mimicry, recitation, acting, but such talents 
she held in abeyance. At sixteen she acted in a court play, 
probably Dryden’s Indian Emperor, with great success, but her 
growingly devout spirit came to abhor such recreations, so that 
when she was summoned by royal request to act in Crowne’s 
Calisto, in 1674, even though the play was to be given all by 
ladies, and those the most illustrious in the land, it was a mat- 
ter of almost tragic grief to her that her duty forbade a refusal. 
“To be herselfe an Actoresse .. . cost her not only great re- 
luctancy but many teares.”’? Though she was decked with 
jewels worth £20,000, though she “trode the Stage with a 
surprizeing and admirable Aire,” and though the whole theater 
was extolling her, she felt no transport, but, when an interval 
came, “retired into a Corner, reading a book of devotion.” Not 


1 Evelyn, John: Life of Mrs. Godolphin (ed. Edward William Harcourt of 
Nuneham Park), p. 10. 
2 Tbid., p. 24. 


IN ENGLAND FROM 1650 TO 1760 79 


even the fact that she played the part of “Diana, the Goddess 
of Chastity,” consoled her. 

She had one real calling and that was to a religious life. As 
a child of seven, in France with the Countess of Guildford, 
though often “tempted by that By-Gott proselitesse to goe to 
Masse and be a papist,”! she yet could maintain her own faith. 
Because of her spiritual precocity she was “admitted to the 
holy Sacrament when she was hardly Eleaven years of age.” 
Though she disliked Catholicism, she praised nunneries, and 
would have chosen a retired life of devotion and good works, 
had not her love for Mr. Godolphin and the urgent advice of 
Mr. Evelyn restrained her. Nearly all her writing and reading 
were along religious lines. Mr. Evelyn says on this point: 


She has houres alsoe for reading historye and diversions of that na- 
ture; butt allwayes such as were choice, profitable and instructive, 
and she had devoured an incredible deale of that solid knowledge, and 
could accompt of it to admiration; soe as I have even beene aston- 
ished to find such an heape of excellent things and material obser- 
vations collected and written with her owne hand, many of which 
(since her being with God) came to myne; for, besides a world of ad- 
mirable prayers and pieces of flagrant devotion, meditations, and dis- 
courses on various subjects (which she compos’d), there was hardly a 
booke she read that she had not common placed, as it were, or taken 
some remarkable note of; add this to the Diary of her owne life, actions, 
resolutions, and other circumstances, of which I shall give some speci- 
men. She had contracted the intire historye of the Scriptures, and the 
most illustrious examples, sentences, and precepts, digested under op- 
posite and proper heads; and collected togeather the result of every 
Article of the Apostles’ Creed, out of Bishop Pearson’s excellent 
Treatise. I have allready spoken of her Sermon Notes: butt to give 
a just Account of her Letters, they are so many and in so excellent 
naturall and easy a style, that, as for their number, one would believe 
she did nothing else butt write, soe, for their weight and ingenuity, 
that she ought to doe nothing else; and soe easyly did her Invention 
flow, that I have seen her write a very long letter without once takeing 
off her pen (butt to dip it), and that with exterordinary Judgment.? 


Her Diary is a delightfully spontaneous document. Here is 
one Resolution: 
1 Evelyn, John: Life of Mrs. Godolphin, p. 8. 2 Tbid., p. 184. 


80 THE LEARNED LADY 


June the 2d. 

I will nere play this halfe year butt att 3 penny omber, and then 
with one att halves. I will not I doe not vow, but I will not doe it; — 
’ what, loose mony att Cards, yet not give (to) the poore! ’T is robbing 
God, misspending tyme, and missimploying my Talent: three great 
Sinns. Three pounds would have kept three people from starveing 
a month: well, I will not play. 


Equally genuine and charming, but in more decorous and 
solemn fashion, is the letter in which she consecrated John 
Evelyn her friend. Indeed, the whole quaint and formal episode 
of the establishment of this remarkable friendship, seems in- 
credibly pure and lovely when thought of as occurring in the 
court of which Grammont’s Memoirs is a fair record. Evelyn 
wrote “‘a little master-piece of biography,” partly because of 
his intimate knowledge of Mrs. Godolphin’s spiritual experi- 
ence and his personal affection for her, but also, in part, be- 
cause his imagination was inevitably stimulated by the vision 
of a life so crystal clear in an environment so murky. 

The versatility and intellectual energy of the Duchess of 
Newcastle, the quick wit and instinct for style in Dorothy Os- 
borne’s letters, the grave and sincere religious feeling coupled 
with considerable theological learning on the part of women in 
influential positions like Margaret Blagge, Lady Pakington, 
and Lady Warwick, the vivid social and political pictures in the 
biographies by Mrs. Hutchinson and Lady Fanshawe, the gay 
playing with belles lettres in Mary North’s little society, and es- 
pecially the extraordinary vogue of Mrs. Philips, are sufficient 
indications, as we look back over the period, that a new spirit 
was awake. It reads now almost as if there were a general and 
brilliant opening of literary pursuits to women. But it is also 
significant to recall that Mrs. Philips and the Duchess of New- 
castle were the only two women whose ability or learned tastes 
were known at the time beyond their own small private circle. 
In reality the work was sporadic, secluded, uninfluential. 
And the fame even of the Duchess of Newcastle and Mrs. 


1 Evelyn, John: Life of Mrs. Godolphin, p. 215. 


IN ENGLAND FROM 1650 TO 1760 81 


Philips is hardly established before 1660. It is with the Restora- 
tion that the more varied and public activities begin. 


2. THE CENTURY FOLLOWING THE RESTORATION 


The period to be here presented in detail is the century 
following the Restoration. During this period the work of wo- 
men spreads out in new directions. Not only is there a greater 
variety in the kinds of writing, but other forms of self-expres- 
sion are entered upon. In this more complicated era the strictly 
chronological method becomes confusing. It seems more de- 
sirable to take up the work under different species, keeping to 
chronological development within each species. 

Two kinds of new work by women, acting and painting, 
demand brief preliminary notice. Though possibly not within 
the category of learned occupations they must yet be recog- 
nized as of great importance in the new life opening before 
women. 


AcTRESSES 


Charles II had in France been familiar with the custom of 
having women on the stage, and when he issued his two pa- 
tents to Davenant and Killigrew he inserted the famous clause, 
“We do permit and give leave from this time to come that all 
women’s parts be acted by women.”’ Mrs. Coleman had taken 
the part of Ianthe in Davenant’s Siege of Rhodes in 1656, but 
this was not a regular play. It was more of the nature of an 
opera or spectacle. The first woman to act on the public stage 
in England was probably the actress who played Desdemona, 
December 8, 1660. “J. Jordan”’ wrote a prologue to introduce 
her as “the first woman that came to act on the stage,” but he 
did not give her name. 

The theatrical novelty initiated by this unknown actress was 
far-reaching in its effects. Through the ensuing years a con- 
stantly increasing number of women followed the lure of 
the stage. No other opportunity open to the ambition of 

1 Fitzgerald: History of the English Stage, vol. 1, pp. 60-62. 


82 THE LEARNED LADY 


women met with so eager a response, or could number so many 
aspirants, or could register success so unqualified. Yet as we 
read of these early English actresses we hardly think of acting 
as a profession or of them as artists. They were in no sense 
students of the parts they played. Beauty, youth, high spirits, 
a certain native endowment of wit or boldness, ability to sing 
a song or dance a jig, seemed to meet all the demands of au- 
diences too much delighted with the mere fact of seeing women 
on the stage to be over-critical of their technique or interpre- 
tation. Moreover, the runs of plays were short, three days 
being about the average, so there was hardly time to work up 
finished productions. The stage tenure of most of the actresses 
was also brief, hardly more than a prelude to the social and 
domestic irregularities of their later lives. Cunningham names 
Mrs. Betterton as the only actress of Charles II’s day who 
was not mistress to some man at court. “Frailties,” as they 
were euphemistically called, became so normally associated 
with actresses that Anne Bracegirdle excited incredulous sur- 
prise by her reputed purity of life, and she was presented by 
the noblemen of her day with a purse of eight hundred guineas 
in recognition of her virtue.1 The immorality of these early 


1 “Gildon, in the Comparison between the two stages, 1702, attacks Mrs. 
Bracegirdle’s private character. 

“*Sullen. But does that Romantick Virgin still keep up her reputation? ” 

“““Critick. D’ ye mean her reputation for acting? ’ 

“*Sullen. I do; but if I were to be saved for believing that single article, 
I could not do it: ’t is all, all a juggle, ’t is legerdemain; the best on ’t is, she 
falls into good hands, and the secrecy of the intrigue secures her; but as to her 
innocence, I believe no more on ’t than I believe of John Mandevil.’ 

“Tom Brown, in his description of the playhouse, is still more severe on 
Mrs. Bracegirdle. ... Among Tom Brown’s Letters from the Dead to the 
Living, there is one from Mrs. Behn to the famous Virgin Actress — and an- 
other from the Virgin to Mrs. Behn. 

“Gildon and Tom Brown seem to have had no foundation for their ill na- 
ture, but the extreme difficulty with which an actress at this period of the stage 
must have preserved her chastity. 

“Mrs. Bracegirdle was perhaps a woman of cold constitution. 

“Anthony Aston says — ‘Mrs. Bracegirdle, that Diana of the stage, had 
many assailants on her virtue, as Lord Lovelace and Mr. Congreve, the last 
of which had her company most; but she ever resisted his vicious attacks, and, 


IN ENGLAND FROM 1650 TO 1760 83 


actresses, girls of no rigorous professional training and no pro- 
fessional standards, is quite intelligible. In appearing before 
the public at all they broke so many conventions, defied the 
feminine ideal so completely, that a few steps further in pur- 
suit of flattery and luxurious living hardly seemed to count. 
As actresses they were at once under a moral stigma anyhow, 
so far as the soberer part of the community was concerned, and 
they naturally followed the path of least resistance and accepted 
the morality of the court of the merry monarch, a court where 
virtue with her “lean and scare-crow face” seldom intruded. 
The unfortunate outcome of the turpitude of the Restoration 
actresses is that they built up in the public mind a prejudice 
against actresses as a class, a prejudice which affected later 
even such women as Mrs. Betterton, Mrs. Bracegirdle, Mrs. 
Cibber, or Mrs. Siddons. But it must not be forgotten that 
they served the cause of women by opening the way to a new 
and important profession, a profession in which women have 
no handicaps. The stage has been represented by more women 
of genius, and has given to women more unstinted recognition 
in fame and money, than have any of the other forms of pub- 
lic activity into which women have so far been admitted, except, 
possibly, in late years, administrative work in social service. 

It is unnecessary, in this study, to carry the account of the 
actresses into further detail, or further down the century. 
The history of the part women took on the seventeenth and 
eighteenth century stage would make a volume of itself. And 
since it was many years before acting was connected with any 
yet was always uneasy at his leaving her — she was very shy of Lord Love- 
lace’s company, as being an engaging man, who drest well; and as, every day, 
his servant came to her, to ask her how she did, she always return’d her answer 
in the most obeisant words and behavior, that she was indifferent well, she 
humbly thanked his Lordship . . . her virtue had its reward, both in applause 
and specie; for it happen’d, that as the Dukes of Dorset and Devonshire, Lord 
Hallifax, and other Nobles, over a bottle, were extolling Mrs. Bracegirdle’s 
virtuous behavior, ““Come,”’ says Lord Hallilfax — “‘You all commend her 


virtue, etc., but why do we not present this incomparable woman with some- 
thing worthy her acceptance?” — his Lordship deposited 200 guineas, which 


299 


the rest made up to 800, and sent to her with encomiums on her virtue.’” 
(Genest: Some Account of the English Stage, vol. 11, pp. 376-78.) 


84 THE LEARNED LADY 


critical or intellectual conception of the plays represented, it 
may suffice here to leave this portion of the new work of women 
with the mere announcement of its inception. 


ARTISTS 


To acting we may add another new realm, that of painting. 
The earliest woman portrait-painter on record in England is 
Anne Carlisle, who died about 1680. In 1658 Sir William San- 
derson, in his Graphice, commenting on the artists then in 
England, said, “And in Oyl Colours we have a vertuous ex- 
ample in that worthy Artist, Mrs. Carlisle.” In the notes left 
by Vertue to Walpole was a statement that he had seen in about 
1730 the portrait Mrs. Carlisle had painted of herself. Her chief 
work was in copying the paintings of Italian masters, or, ac- 
cording to a fashion of the times, reproducing them in minia- 
ture. It is said that Charles I admired her work so warmly 
that he presented to her and Van Dyck ultramarine to the value 
of five hundred pounds.! 

Of more distinguished ability was Mary Beale (1637-1697), ? 
who is said to have studied either with Sir Peter Lely or Robert 
Walker. At least she watched Lely paint and thereby gained 
some of his technique. She worked in oils, water-colors, and 
crayons. Through Sir Peter Lely she was given access to some 
of the best works of Van Dyck and in copying these gained a 
training somewhat similar to that given most artists by so- 
journs in Italy or Holland. There are in the English National 
Portrait Gallery portraits by her of Charles II and Abraham 
Cowley. At Knole is her portrait of John Milton; at Woburn 
Abbey, one of the Duke of Monmouth; Archbishop Tillotson, 
Henry, Duke of Norfolk, Dr. Sydenham, Dr. Croone, Bishop 
Wilkins, are among those who sat to her. No other English 
portrait-painter of the period had so distinguished a clientéle 
or is represented by so many canvases in English galleries. 

1 Walpole, Horace: Anecdotes of Painting, vol. 1, p. 381. 

2 Walpole, Horace: Anecdotes of Painting, vol. 1, 537-44; Pilkington: Dic- 


tionary of Painters, 1770; Biographia Britannica, vol. 1, p. 30; Cibber: Lives 
of the Poets, vol. u. 


IN ENGLAND FROM 1650 TO 1760 85 


Her success may be measured, in part, by her financial returns. 
In a pocket-book kept by her husband in 1672 is this entry: 
“Received this year, for pictures done by my dearest heart, 
202I. 5s.” The receipts for 1674 were 2161. 5s.; and for 1677, 
4291. She was still painting important portraits in 1691, for 
we find in the Term Catalogue for Michaelmas of that year the 
announcement of “The true Effigies of his Grace, John, Lord 
Archbishop of Canterbury. Engraven by Rob. White on a 
large sheet of Paper, from the Original lately painted by 
Mrs. Mary Beale.” 

According to the manuscript of Mr. Oldys, Mrs. Beale was 
also celebrated for her poetry. He styles her, “that masculine 
poet, as well as Painter, the incomparable Mrs. Beale.” Dr. 
Woodford included in his translations of the Psalms several 
versions by Mrs. Beale whom he eulogizes as “an absolutely 
compleat Gentlewoman,” and to whom he wrote several poems 
under the name “Beliza.”’ ! 

Anne Killigrew (1660-1685), a maid of honor to Mary of 
Modena, died at twenty-five, but she had already attained con- 
siderable repute as a portrait painter. There is a tradition 
that she studied with Sir Peter Lely. If so she must have taken 
these lessons before she was twenty, for Lely left England in 
1680. Dryden says that her portrait of James II expressed “not 
only his outward part, but drew forth the very image of his 
heart,” and that she was equally successful in depicting the 
bright beauty and peerless majesty of Mary of Modena. Her 
portrait of herself was engraved by Becket and prefaces the 
volume of her poems issued the year after her death. Other 
paintings were religious in subject, as in her portrayal of inci- 
dents in the life of John the Baptist; or mythological, as in her 
representation of Diana’s nymphs. Of far more possible sig- 
nificance is her landscape work. During 1660-1685 Robert 
Streater is the only English landscape-painter of whom we 
have record. Charles II brought over a number of Italian and 
Flemish artists who painted English landscapes in the style of 

1 Cibber: Lives of the Poets, vol. 11, pp. 224 ff. 


86 THE LEARNED LADY 


Ruysdael, Poussin, or Salvator Rosa, and their work would be 
the pictures chiefly known at court. It is not improbable that 
Miss Killigrew’s landscapes were copies or imitations of these 
foreign artists. Dryden says she painted ruins of Greece and 
Rome, and forest glades in which were nymphs and shaggy 
satyrs.. Such pictures must have been copies. But Dryden also 
enumerates sylvan scenes of herds and flocks; clear, shallow 
little brooks; deep rivers reflecting as in a mirror the trees on 
their banks. Such pictures are truly English in tone and what- 
ever their intrinsic value such a choice of subjects would put 
her with Robert Streater at the very inception of English land- 
scape art. And though the scanty records concerning her 
painting do not substantiate Dryden’s description of her land- 
scapes, it could hardly be supposed that he would have been 
so explicit in a poem written for the family and immediately 
after her death had there not been some pictures at least mod- 
erately correspondent to his lines.! 

Other seventeenth-century names of less importance show 
an aspiration in art somewhat above that countenanced by the 
boarding-schools. Mrs. Pepys and Miss Margaret Pen may 
serve to indicate the sort of work being done in amateurish 
fashion in various homes. Both ladies were “learning to limn” 
with one Mr. Browne. Pepys was tremendously interested in his 
wife’s progress. In the midst of terrifying accounts of the 
plague and the fire there come in 1665 and 1666 frequent notes 
on her pictures.. Once after a week’s absence on exhausting 
work he records, “To my wife, and having viewed her last 
piece of drawing since I saw her which is seven or eight days, 
which pleases me beyond anything in the world, to bed with 
great content, but weary.” The next day, on being importuned 
to buy her a pearl necklace, he promises it, but only “if she 
pleases me in her painting.”’ On one occasion he called on Lady 
Pen and says of the visit, “Talking with Mrs. Pegg Pen, and 


1 At Admiral Killigrew’s sale in 1727 were six of his niece’s canvases. They 
were Venus and Adonis, A Satyr playing on a Pipe, Judith and Holofernes, A 
woman’s head, Graces dressing Venus, and her own portrait. 


E KILLIGREW 


ANN 
y he: 


IRS 


Xd 
From a painting b 


ars 


T. Chamb: 


rself engraved by 


=} 
‘ 
> 
' 
: 
Cae 


IN ENGLAND FROM 1650 TO 1760 87 


looking at her pictures, and commended them; but, Lord! so 
far short of my wife’s as no comparison.” A month later is the 
note, “I took my Lady Pen home, and her daughter Pegg 
and, after dinner I made my wife show them her pictures, 
which did mad Pegg Pen, who learnes of the same man.” In 
September, 1665, Pepys had just seen his wife’s picture of our 
Saviour and thought it so pretty that he boasted of it to Evelyn, 
at which Evelyn paid him in kind by telling him that “the 
beautiful Mrs. Middleton is rare (in painting) and his own wife 
do brave things.”’! 

The Evelyn family seems to have been instinctively artistic. 
In Mr. Thoresby’s account of a visit to Evelyn, he said he was 
shown “many drawings and paintings of his own and his lady’s 
doing; one especially of enamel was surprisingly fine, and this 
ingenious lady told me how she wrought it.”” Both Mr. Evelyn 
and his son Draper were proud of Mary’s work in painting. 
Sixteen years after her death Mr. Thoresby wrote: “He after- 
wards carried me in his coach to his son Draper’s at the Temple, 
and showed me many curious pieces of his ingenious daughter’s 
performances, both very small in miniature, and as large as the 
life in oil colours, equal it is thought to the greatest masters of 
the age. He gave me a specimen of some prospects he took in 
Italy, and etched upon the copper by his own hand.” 

At the end of the century is Sarah Curtis (d. 1743) who was 
married in 1701 to Bishop Hoadly. Before her marriage she 
had been a pupil of Mary Beale, and she is now represented in 
the National Portrait Gallery by three canvases, portraits of 
Burnet, Winston, and Hoadly. Mrs. Rowe’s paintings were 
likewise highly prized by discriminating friends. Of greater 
interest is Mrs. Delany (1700-1788). She copied at least 
seventy-two pictures by old masters and painted many por- 
traits. Her work is not represented in public galleries, but 
many of her pictures are still preserved in private collections. 
Susan Penelope Gibson was a successful miniature painter. 


1 Pepys, Diary: May 7, June 30, July 26 and 29, Aug. 7, 21, 22, Sept. 3, 27, 
Oct. 10, 1665. 


88 THE LEARNED LADY 


Elizabeth Creed was also an artist of at least local repute. 
She did sacred subjects as altar-pieces for neighboring churches 
and she painted numerous portraits. She also gave free les- 
sons to the girls living near her. Her daughter Elizabeth, who 
inherited her artistic tastes, is said to have ornamented a hall 
in a Tudor mansion near Oundle. 

Short and insignificant as this list appears, it yet assumes 
real importance when we realize not only that these were the 
earliest English women to enter this field, but that the list 
shows up surprisingly well when compared with a similar list 
of the native English painters among the men of the period. 
Charles I was a great lover of art and he summoned many ar- 
tists, some of the first rank, to England, and he bought pictures 
with a far-sighted munificence, and Charles II was ambitious 
of following along the same distinguished path. But a list of 
the pictures painted in England before 1700 shows hardly an 
English name. Hence the presence of any successful women 
artists is doubly significant. 

The amateurish quality of the painting may be in part ex- 
plained by the fact that in but one case, that of Mary Beale, 
was there any impetus or training such as are necessarily asso- 
ciated with work adopted as a profession. The painting was 
an accomplishment, a pleasant occupation for leisure hours, 
a resource, rather than a life purpose ardently pursued. The 
only external reward for the many hours at the easel was the 
praise of a small circle of friends. The real incentive was an 
inner demand for some form of self-expression, and the mere 
number of pictures painted, quite apart from the question of 
their excellence, is indicative of the eagerness with which 
women welcomed any sort of opportunity for the free play of 
their own individuality. 


AUTHORS 
It was not, however, acting or painting that occupied most 
of the women whose natures craved something out of the or- 
dinary routine. Writing was a much more natural and feasible 


IN ENGLAND FROM 1650 TO 1760 89 


resource. Acting implied a public, and even painting, espe- 
cially portrait-painting, was likely to be semi-public. But writ- 
ing could be carried on in retirement and the results submitted 
only to the partial criticism of a home or social circle. It did 
not bring women before a carping public or necessarily into com- 
petition with men, for even if plays were produced and books 
published, the name of the writer could be veiled, as it usually 
was, under a decent anonymity. Hence women who respected 
the obvious conventions could yet indulge themselves in au- 
thorship. 


WRITERS ON PRACTICAL SUBJECTS 


When women entered upon writing as a career, it might be 
thought that they would at first take up subjects familiar to 
them, but such was not the case. For instance, most of the 
books for children, before the venture of the Newberys about 
the middle of the eighteenth century, were by men.! It was 
James Janeway whose maxim, “A child is never too little to 
go to Hell,” resulted in works so popular as A Looking Glass 
for Children and A Token for Children (1676); John Bunyan’s 
A Book for Boys and Girls, or Country Rimes for Children; 
being Divine Poems on the Creed, Commonwealth and Several 
other Subjects (1690); Mr. Mason’s A Little Catechism with 
litile Verses and litile sayings, for little children (1693). The 
Dwine and Moral Songs for Children, by Isaac Watts in 1720, 
carried on the religious instruction. There were also various 
accounts of the “Life and Saintly Death” of children of tender 
years, which were published with the avowed purpose of in- 
fluencing other children of like tender years, but none of these 
are by women. The first women I have come upon who wrote 
professedly for children are Sarah Fielding and Mrs. Collyer 
in 1749.2 


1 For a list of the books for children published by Newbery and Carnan 
see the 1768 edition (a fifth edition) of Goody Two Shoes (Notes and Queries, 
4th Series, vol. vi, p. 510). Cf. Mrs. Field’s The Child and His Book and 
Elizabeth Godfrey’s Home Life under the Stuarts, chap. xm. _ 

2 See pp. 233-39. 


90 THE LEARNED LADY 


In a somewhat less degree the same condition exists in rela- 
tion to medicine, especially in the realms most definitely in the 
hands of women. Mrs. Pilkington tells us that her father was 
the first man midwife in England, but nearly all the books on 
midwifery were written by men. Two women, however, appear 
in print, in a discussion of their professional work. Mrs. Jane 
Sharp’s book is entitled The Midwives’ Book, or the whole Art 
of midwifery discovered, directing Child-bearing Women how 
to behave themselves in their Conception, Breeding, Bearing, and 
Nursing, of Children. In Six Books. By Mrs. Jane Sharp, 
Practitioner in the Art of Midwifery above thirty years.+ 

Mrs. Elizabeth Cellier, a second writer on midwifery, is 
known perhaps chiefly because she was supposed to have some 
connection with the Meal Tub Plot. After her acquittal from 
treason charges she wrote a pamphlet called Malice Defeated, in 
which she courageously expressed her adherence to an unpopu- 
lar cause in the words, “I do not yet so much fear the smell of 
Newgate as to be frighted for telling the truth; nor is death so 
great a terror to me, but that I am still ready to seal the same 
with my blood.” 2 She must have been a woman of substance 
as well as courage, for she was fined a thousand pounds be- 
cause of certain passages in this pamphlet. She was also con- 
demned to stand in the pillory three times, a punishment which, 
according to Lady Russell, she bore with intrepidity and non- 
chalance, protecting her head from missiles by means of a 
battledore which she held up with one hand, while with the 
other she gathered up and put into her pocket all the stones 
that fell within her reach. 

In her profession of midwifery Mrs. Cellier was of high re- 
pute, but her interests were not circumscribed by her own prac- 
tice. One of her schemes was the establishment of a “Colledg 
of Midwives”’ where the best possible training should be given. 
Though her pamphlet, entitled A Scheme for the Foundation of 
a Royal Hospital and raising a revenue of 5000 1 or 60001 a 


1 Term Catalogues, Easter, 1671, Easter, 1690. 
2 Lady Russell's Letters, vol. 1, p. 70 n. 


IN ENGLAND FROM 1650 TO 1760 91 


year by and for the Maintenance of a Corporation of Skilful Mid- 
wives, did not result in the establishment of her proposed col- 
lege, the idea and the formulation of the plan do credit to her 
foresight and intelligence, and sound quite in line with modern 
forms of woman’s civic enterprise. 

The seventeenth and eighteenth centuries could show a long 
list of interesting and elaborately worked-out books on house- 
wifery in general and cooking in particular, but it seldom hap- 
pens that one of these books is by a woman. It is, to be sure, 
not impossible that more of the material was furnished by wo- 
men than is apparent on the surface. Very many of the books 
on housekeeping matters were anonymous and were probaby 
mere publishers’ compilations from unacknowledged sources, 
and in such cases the actual material may have come from va- 
rious housewives. But during the century I have come upon 
but three women who published under their own names the re- 
sults of their experiences as cooks. The earliest of these was 
Mrs. Hannah Woolley. She was born about 1623. Her mother 
and elder sisters are said to have been “very well skilled in phy- 
sick and chirurgery ” and they taught her in her youth. She was 
twice married, the first time to a schoolmaster named Woolley, 
_ and then to a Mr. Francis Challinor. She is known usually as 
Mrs. Woolley. One of her books, The Queen-like Closet, or A 
rich Cabinet stored with all manner of rare Receipts for preserving, 
Candying, and Cookery. Very pleasant and beneficial to all in- 
genuous persons of the Female Sex, reached its eleventh edition 
by 1696. Mrs. Woolley had been governess in two noble families 
and had acquired definite ideas as to polite behavior. This 
knowledge also she committed to the printed page. On manners, 
but especially on household management, she wrote as an au- 
thority and received due recognition. 

Another book, by a woman whose initials I have not been 
able to expand into a name, is the following: The Cook’s New 
Years Gift, Cookery refined, or The Lady, Gentlewoman and Serv- 
ant-maid’s Companion: containing the Art of dressing all sorts 
of Flesh, Fish, and Fowl, various ways, after the newest Mode; with 


92 THE LEARNED LADY 


their proper seasonings, sauces, Garnishes, serving up and carv- 
ing, etc. By Mrs. A. M.a long practiser of this curious Art. 
(Term Catalogues, Mich. 1697. Mich. 1700.) 

The work of Mrs. Woolley in the seventeenth century found 
its most worthy counterpart in the eighteenth century in Han- 
nah Glasse’s The Art of Cookery Made Plain and Easy, which far 
exceeds any Thing of the kind ever yet Published ... By a Lady. 
London. Printed for the Author; and sold at Mrs. Ashburn’s, a 
China-Shop, the Corner of Fleet Ditch, 1747. The book was is- 
sued with about two hundred subscribers. A fourth edition in 
octavo came out in 1751, a ninth edition m 1759, and many 
later editions. In her Preface Mrs. Glasse said, “If I have not 
wrote in the high polite Stile I hope I shall be forgiven, for my 
Intention is to instruct the lower Sort, therefore treat them in 
their own Way. For Example: when I bid them lard a Fowl, 
if I should bid them lard with large Lardoons, they would 
not know what I want: But when I say they must lard with 
small Pieces of Bacon, they know what I mean.” The new ele- 
ment in her book was this attempt to write out receipts that 
were simple enough to come into general use. 


WRITERS ON RELIGION AND THEOLOGY 


The Term Catalogues for 1670-1713 show how great was the 
preponderance during those years of books on “ Divinity.” That 
women should share in this prevailing interest is but natural, 
for religion came within the accepted canon of the truly femi- 
nine. And there are evidences of an even greater amount of de- 
votional writing by women than might be expected. The 
period 1650 to 1750, and especially the first half of that period, 
could show a long list of women noted for lives of piety and 
good works.! The loose living characteristic of the court appa- 

1 See Pious Englishwomen of the Seventeenth Century. Derby, 1845. The list 
of names given in this book is as follows: Lady Falkland, Lady Carberry, 
Lady Sunderland, Lady Capel, Mrs. Basire, Lady Mary Wharton, Margaret 
Lady Maynard, Anne Lady Halkett, Lady Jane Cheyne, Countess of Derby, 


Countess of Dorset; with notices of Sibylla Egerton, Lady Sophia Chaworth, 
Isabella Fotherby, Alice Duchess Dudley, Lady Grace Grenville, Mary Perry, 


IN ENGLAND FROM 1650 TO 1760 93 


rently had its reaction towards exceptional spiritual rigor on 
the part of many ladies of rank. And of these devout ladies no 
small number found in the composition of religious verse or 
prose the intellectual and emotional outlet denied them in 
other ways. Almost none of this writing was meant for a pub- 
lic. The reams of meditations, prayers, and reflections left in 
manuscript were merely a private resource, and often kept se- 
cret even from the author’s family. Such writings were in their 
nature fugitive, and it would only now and then happen that 
some relative or friend would collect and order the papers and 
see them through the press. We accordingly get scattered hints 
through funeral sermons and casual notices of an amount of 
devotional writing greatly in excess of that published. But to 
tabulate even all the published material would be wearisome 
and to no good end. A few illustrative examples showing the 
chief characteristics may suffice. 


One of the best examples of the persistent and prodigious 
industry shown by some of these ladies is the y,4, 
work of Lady Elizabeth Brooke. She began at Elizabeth Brooke 
thirty to make notes on sermons, to copy ex- (7°°%7683) 
tracts from commentaries, and occasionally to write out some 
personal opinions, and she kept at this sedative occupation till 
her death fifty-two years later. It is painful to reflect on such 
a mass of undigested material, but the significant fact remains 
that she preferred such reading and writing to the ordinary in- 
terests of her sex. Some of her “Observations and Rules for 
Practice” were published as an appendix to the sermon 
preached at her funeral. Selections from her writings were 
published as late as 1828 in The Lady’s Monitor. 


Anne Murray, Lady Halkett, was even more industrious. 


Lady Mary Hastings, Lady Pakington, Lady Digby, Mary Evelyn, Elizabeth 
Lady Guildford, Lady Newland, Lady Cholmondely, Katharine Lady Neville, 
Barbara Lady Longueville, Mrs. Susannah Hopton, Anne Baynard, Catharine 
Bovey, Mrs. Mary Astell, Lady Elizabeth Hastings. (Notes and Queries, 
6th Series, vol. vu, p. 355.) _ 


94 THE LEARNED LADY 


Her father, who was tutor of Charles I and Provost of Eton, 
Aung Murray, died when she was a child, but her mother, who 
Lady Halkett was governess to the Princess Elizabeth, gave 
(Gaa-r699) her “a complete education.” Of her early life 
she says: “My mother spared no expense in educating all her 
children in the most suitable way to improve them... and 
paid masters for teaching my sister and mee to write, speak 
French, play on the lute and virginalls, and dance, and kept a 
gentlewoman to teach us all kinds of needlework, which shows 
I was not brought up in an idle life.” After several complicated 
and long drawn-out love affairs —fully described in her 
Autobiography — Anne married Sir James Halkett in 1656. 
As the years passed her interests finally centered on two sub- 
jects, divinity and medicine. In “physick and surgery” she 
gained great repute. She was consulted in difficult cases from 
the remotest parts of the kingdom and her fame spread even 
to Holland. It was quaintly said of her: “She was ever em- 
ployed either in doing or reaping good: in the summer season 
she vyed with the bee or ant, in gathering herbs, flowers, worms, 
snails, ete., for the still or limbeck, for the mortar or boyling 
pan, etc., and was ordinarily then in a dress fitted for her still- 
house; making preparations of extracted waters, spirits, oint- 
ments, conserves, salves, powders, etc., which she ministered 
every Wednesday to a multitude of poor infirm persons, be- 
sides what she dayly sent abroad to persons of all ranks who 
consulted her in their maladies.” ! But it was religious themes 
only that employed her pen. The catalogue of her writings 
includes twenty-one volumes, or a total of about eight thousand 
pages of manuscript, some in quarto, some in folio size, and all 
bound. Some of these books were printed at Edinburgh in 
1701. The title of one book of three hundred and fifteen pages 
will indicate the general character of her writing: Select Medita- 
tions and Prayers upon the First Week, with Observations on each 
Days Creation, and Considerations on the Seven Capital Vices to be 
opposed, and their opposite Virtues to be studied and practised. 
1 Hill, Georgiana: Women in English Life, vol. 1, p. 191. 


IN ENGLAND FROM 1650 TO 1760 95 


Vices to be subdued Virtues to be learned 
Pride Sunday Humility 
Covetousness Monday Contentation 
Lust Tuesday Chastity 
Envy Wednesday Charity 
Gluttony Thursday Temperance 
Anger Friday Patience 
Sloth Saturday Diligence 


All but nine of these books were written during Lady Hal- 
kett’s twenty-eight years of widowhood when she had much 
leisure, but under any circumstances the task was a great one, 
and becomes the more amazing when we reflect upon it as 
really only a private recreation. To write so much with no ur- 
gency of fame or money shows some very strong inner demand 
for expression and a very facile pen. 


Another type of religious book goes back for its inspiration 
to Elizabeth Jocelyn’s famous Legacie. One of 
Lady Halkett’s books was The Mother’s Will to 
an Unborn Child, written in 1656 before the birth of her daugh- 
ter Elizabeth. Books of advice from parents to children to be 
read after the death of the parents were not uncommon. Eliza- 
beth Sadler (1623-1690), the wife of the Reverend Anthony 
Walker, was an exceedingly devout woman whose literary in- 
stinct and a prevision of death led her to write a large book in 
octavo for the instruction of her two daughters. Two other 
books will sufficiently illustrate the type: The Experiences of 
God’s gracious dealing with Mrs. Elizabeth White, late wife of 
Mr. Tho. White of Caldecot in the County of Bucks; as they 
were written under her own hand, and found in her Closet after 
her decease: she dying in child-bed, December 5th, 1669; 1 The 
Legacie of a Dying Mother to her mourning children; being the 
Experiences of Mistress Susanna Bell, who died March 13, 1672. 
With an Epistle Dedicatory by Thomas Brookes, Minister of the 
Gospel. 


“ Legacies ”” 


1 Published Easter, 1671. 


96 THE LEARNED LADY 


Lady Russell is an example of a woman who definitely set 


Bartel out to be religious, and whose writings contain 
Lady Russel. 20 analysis of her methods. The circumstances 
(1636-1723) of her life give everything pertaining to her a 


particular interest. The execution of Lord Russell for treason 
in 1683 left her broken by the shock. She had, though without 
avail, set in motion every possible agency to avert his fate, and 
she had devoted herself absolutely to him till his tragic death. 
Then, after a period of the deepest despondency, she entered 
again upon the duties that lay before her. She conducted the 
education and arranged the marriages of her three children. 
She showed herself an excellent business woman in the man- 
agement of her estate. And she steadily interested herself in 
securing benefices and other offices for persons of whom her 
husband would have approved. Her Letters as published con- 
tain a few during the first years of her happy married life; 
many written concerning the “judicial murder” of Lord Rus- 
sell; and very many concerning family affairs and the candi- 
dates for whom she was seeking favor. As letters they are 
uninteresting. The subject-matter is generally too local and 
temporary to hold the attention of the modern reader, and the 
style is dry and hard. Even the records of her bitter grief and 
of her struggle to attain a mood of Christian resignation are 
less affecting than might be expected. A kind of apathy seemed 
to settle down over her spirit. She was too deeply hurt to find 
in words any balm for her sorrows. She answered condolences 
when she must, but briefly, and with no lightening of the gloom 
that encompassed her. Of all her letters the longest and most 
valuable as a personal revelation is one written to her children 
July 21, 1691, “a day of sad remembrances,” for it was the 
anniversary of her husband’s execution eight years before. In 
1691, Rachel, the oldest child, was twenty years old, and 
Wriothesley, the youngest, was eleven. The five or six pages in 
which Lady Russell recounts, probably especially for the bene- 
fit of Rachel, her method of personal spiritual watch-care, 
has great value as a religious document, for she was not alone 


IN ENGLAND FROM 1650 TO 1760 97 


in her way of seeking salvation, in her heart-searchings, in her 
dependence on the external means of grace, in her sedulous 
striving after perfection. It was the devout habit of devout 
people of the time, but perhaps carried to a meticulous excess 
by Lady Russell. She says that she was always provided with 
a little piece of paper on which she wrote her faults and temp- 
tations as they occurred during the day. At night a careful 
review of this record contributed to a better watch and ward. 


And then [she continued], upon Friday morning when I have prayed 
my usual daily prayers (which have bin most constantly for many 
years those in taler’s holy living) before I pray that of intercession 
pa: 35. Istop... and look upon my dayly notes for that weeke, I re- 
collect my fautes; consider what care I have taken to correct or forsake 
them — but alas when we do best we shall find enof to be humbled for 
— therefore I chuse some prayer of confesion most times that in 
taler’s holy living page 302. When I have done it, I make my resolu- 
tions to do better for ye time to come, and especialy to watch myselfe 
where i ame most apt to fal, naming in what I ame so — then I pray 
some prayer for grace to keep these promises of better obedience — as 
in pa: 31 —for grace to spend our time wel, on page 271, for the 
grace of faith, hope & charity. Then I pray the dayly prayer of inter- 
cession that I left of at in pa: 35 — after this I praise God . . . for all 
the blessings vouchsafed to me both spiritual & temporal — as that 
I was born of Christian parents, not suffered to be strangled in the 
womb, that I was baptized, and sence, educated in Christian Religion. 
I blesse thee for al checks of Conscience I have had especially those 
I have profited by. . . . And then I goe on, I bless thee for our creation, 
preservation &c. — close with ye lords prayer. 


After this service she went over her faults of the week, making 
a summary of them. A similar abridgment for the month was 
entered in a book kept for that purpose, the incriminating little 
pieces of paper were torn up, and a new record entered upon. 
She found that a frequent re-reading of the book “saved much 
time in looking back” and contributed to humility. Evidently 
Lady Russell was as orderly in religion as she was in her business 
affairs. She finds her definite tabulations “hugely more satis- 
fying to her mind, than a more carelesse loose way of living is, 
and no settled method.” ‘The letter closes with the admoni- 


98 THE LEARNED LADY 


tion, “Be devout & reguler in your dutys to God — heaven wil 
be secure, and pleasures innocent.” ! Lady Russell’s letters 
reveal a devout, difficult, over-burdened life, so much con- 
cerned with the means of grace as never to have any happy 
consciousness of grace itself. 


Elizabeth Burnet (1661-1712), daughter of Sir Richard 
Elizabeth Blake, Blake, married at seventeen into a Catholic 
Mrs. Burnet family. Her husband, Robert Berkeley, was a 
acer eTs2) ward of Bishop Fell, through whom the mar- 
riage was brought about. The firmness and tact necessary to 
maintain her own views as a Protestant and hold her husband 
to that faith, and yet not antagonize the family, could hardly 
be expected of so young a girl. But Bishop Fell had judged her 
character well and she met all the demands of so delicate a 
situation. She took advantage of many leisure hours in the 
country to investigate fully the questions at issue between the 
Catholics and the Protestants. She did not know the learned 
tongues, but she studied the Scriptures, read commentaries, 
and conversed with clergymen. When she became a widow in 
1693, at thirty-two, she employed her time in two character- 
istic ways. In the administration of her husband’s charitable 
schemes she found congenial activity. And she gave way to her 
natural instinct for writing. In 1700 she became the wife of 
Bishop Burnet. His approval of her literary work and his re- 
quest that it be published led to the production of her Method of 
Devotion. It was so popular that she revised and enlarged it 
and brought out a second edition. And it was republished in 
1713 after her death. The book contained “Rules for holy and 
devout Living,” “Prayers on Several Occasions,” “Advices 
and Devotions on the Holy Sacrament.” Mrs. Trotter said 
of her in 1701, ‘“‘She has an extraordinary clear and solid judg- 
ment, the truest goodness and prudence, and the most charm- 
ing affability in her behaviour; in short, I have met with no 
such perfection in any of my sex.” 

1 Lady Russell’s Letters, vol. 11, pp. 72-85. 


IN ENGLAND FROM 1650 TO 1760 99 


Elizabeth Bury was another young woman whose bright, ac- 
quisitive mind resented conventional inactivity Elizabeth Bury 
and put out tentacles in all directions for (644-1720) 
knowledge. Philology, philosophy, history, heraldry, geogra- 
phy, mathematics, were among her interests. She contended 
that souls were of no sex and that women were often “dis- 
posed to an accurate search into things curious and profitable, 
as well as others.”” She studied anatomy and medicine until 
she had gained “a surprizing knowledge of the human body, 
and of the Materia Medica,” so that she could state the symp- 
toms of the most difficult and intricate cases in the physician’s 
own terms. She learned French that she might talk with 
French refugees to whom she was a benefactress. Her cor- 
respondence and conversation were both highly prized. But 
all these interests must be counted merely as diversions. “Her 
constant favourite and darling study was divinity.” The 
Bible, Mr. Henry’s Annotations, a few works on practical di- 
vinity, and a competent number of Hebrew books made up her 
working library. Hebrew because of its scriptural importance 
was the subject on which she concentrated her attention and 
she was reputed to have a critical knowledge of its idioms and 
peculiarities. It was said that she could even quote the original 
in common conversation if the elucidation of some text were 
in question. As the years passed, books and writing, “morn- 
ing hours with God,” and many arduous charitable duties so 
fully occupied her that she found mere social life an unrewarded 
tax. Of ordinary conversation she said that though one might 
strike fire “it always fell on wet tinder.” The mass of manu-- 
scripts found after her death reflected the variety of her inter- 
ests, but the majority were on topics such as Meditations on the 
Divinity of the Holy Scriptures, The unreasonableness of Fretiing 
against God, and similar subjects. She kept also a voluminous 
Diary, an abridgment of which was published by her husband 
in Bristol in 1721. Mr. Watts’s Elegy indicates something of 
the reverence with which Mrs. Bury was regarded by her con- 
temporaries; and a woman of her personal charm, executive 


100 THE LEARNED LADY 


ability, alert responsiveness to the calls of charity, along with 
her quick mind, and multifarious, if not always profound, 
learning would take an even higher place in any organized 
community to-day. 


Women also entered the less feminine fields of controversy. 
Susanna Hopton Susanna Hopton is an interesting example. In 
(1627-1709) her youth she had become a Catholic, but un- 
der the influence of her husband she entered upon a thorough 
study of the points at issue between the Catholics and the 
Protestants. Dr. Hickes says of her: “She made herself as per- 
fect in the controversie, as English writers could make her, who 
managed the controversie on both sides. I have (says he) above 
twenty popish authors, which she left me, and some of them 
with marginal notes in her own hand. She was well versed in 
Bishop Moreton’s, Archbishop Laud’s and Mr. Chillingworth’s 
works, and Ranchin’s Review of the Council of Trent, ete.” ! As 
a result of this reading she drew up a long and learned letter to 
Father Tuberville, showing him why she had renounced the 
Church of Rome. This letter was published by Dr. Hickes im- 
mediately after her death in his volume of Controversial Letters 
in 1710. Mr. William said that she was an excellent casuist 
and divine, and could encounter and confute all enemies of the 
church. “Her discourse and stile upon serious matters was 
strong, eloquent and nervous; upon pleasant subjects, witty 
and facetious: and when it required an edge was sharp as a 
razor.” Daily Devotions, Meditations on the Six Days Of Crea- 
tion, and Meditations on the Life of Christ were her other works. 
As a wife, a neighbor, and a friend she seems to have been in 
high esteem, but her life had the church as its center. 


Damaris Cudworth and Mary Astell, two of the most gifted 
Damaris women of the period, became involved in the 
ae ait theological discussion between John Norris and 
(1658-1708) John Locke. Miss Cudworth knew both dis- 


1 Ballard: Memoirs, p. 390. 


IN ENGLAND FROM 1650 TO 1760 101 


putants well. As a young woman she had corresponded with 
Norris on the subject of “Platonic Love,” and in 1689 he had 
dedicated to her his Reflections upon the Conduct of Human Life, 
with reference to the study of learning and knowledge. But it was 
Locke who had a permanent influence on her opinions. While 
she was still in Cambridge with her father, Ralph Cudworth, 
Locke taught her divinity and philosophy. After her marriage 
to Sir Francis Masham in 1685, Locke was a frequent visitor at 
their home, and from 1691 till his death in 1704 he lived per- 
manently with them. Her polemical articles were doubtless 
written under his inspiration. In 1694 the correspondence 
between Mary Astell and John Norris was published, under 
the title, Letters concerning the Love of God. Two years later 
Lady Masham answered their arguments in her Discourse 
concerning the Love of God,' which was attributed to Locke and 
answered by Norris. In 1700 Lady Masham published Occa- 
sional Thoughts in reference to a virtuous Christian Life, which 
is her closing word in the controversy. 

Damaris Cudworth was a woman of remarkable intellect. 
Her father was delighted with the early manifestations of her 
power and he took pride in securing for her the best possible 
education. The curious epitaph on her tomb praises her learn- 
ing, judgment, candor, penetration, and love of truth, and 
credits her with being a devoted and intelligent mother. It 
sums up her character in the statement, that “to the Softness 
and Elegancy of her own Sex”’ she added “‘several of the noblest 
Accomplishments and Qualities of the other,” and that “she 
possessed these advantages in a degree unusual to either.” The 
conventional eulogy on a tomb is always open to suspicion, but 
in this case the vague generalities of the epitaph fall below the 
truth. Locke, in a letter to Phillipp van Limborch, said of her: 
“The Lady herself is so well versed in theological and philo- 
sophical studies and of such an original mind that you will not 
find many men to whom she is not superior in wealth of knowl- 
edge and ability to profit by it. Her judgment is excellent, and 

1 Florence Smith: Mary Astell, p. 109. 


102 THE LEARNED LADY 


I know few who can bring such clearness of thought to bear 
upon the most abstruse subjects, or such capacity for search- 
ing through and solving the difficulties. I do not say of most 
women, but even of most learned men.”! 

Lady Masham was also recognized as one of the early cham- 
pions for woman’s education, for when Mary Astell’s Serious 
Proposal appeared anonymously in 1694 it was by some at- 
tributed to Lady Masham. She took the subject up definitely 
in her Occasional Thoughts. After commenting on the lack of 
knowledge of science, law, history, politics, morals, and reli- 
gion, of most English gentlemen, Lady Masham continued: 


Thus wretchedly destitute of all that Knowledge which they ought 
to have, are, generally speaking, our English gentlemen, and being so, 
what wonder can it be, if they like not that women should have knowl- 
edge; for this is a quality that will give some sort of superiority even 
to those who care not to have it? ... But such men as these would 
assuredly find their account much better therein, if tenderness of that 
prerogative would teach them a more legitimate way of maintaining 
it, than such a one as is a very great impediment or discouragement at 
the least, to others in the doing what God requires of them. For it is 
an undesirable truth that a lady who is able to give an account of her 
faith, and to defend her religion against the attacks of the cavilling 
wits of the age, or the abuses of the obtruders of vain opinions: that 
is capable of instructing her children in the reasonableness of the 
christian religion, and of laying in them the foundations of a solid 
virtue: that a lady, I say, no more knowing than this does demand, 
can hardly escape being called learned by the men of our days, and in 
consequence thereof, becoming a subject of ridicule to one part of 
them, and of aversion to the other; with but a few exceptions of some 
virtuous and rational persons. And is not the incurring of general dis- 
like one of the strongest discouragements we can have to any thing? # 


There was published soon after Lady Gethin’s death, from 
Grace Norton, loose papers left by her, a work entitled Reli- 
Lady Gethin quie Gethiniane. Congreve’s poem, entitled 
Cert. Verses to the Memory of Lady Grace Gethin, 

1 Bourne, H.: Life of Locke, vol. 1, p. 213. 


2 Occasional Thoughts, p. 169. See The Lady’s Magazine, 1774, for an article 
on Lady Masham. 


IN ENGLAND FROM 1650 TO 1760 103 


occasioned by reading her Book, speaks in high praise of her. 
He says the book shows all that study or time could teach. 

But to what height must his amazement rise, 

When, having read the work, he turns his eyes 

Again to view the foremost opening page, 

And there the beauty, sex, and tender age, 

Of her beholds, in whose pure mind arose 

Th’ ethereal source, from whence the current flows. 

Lady Gethin was counted a marvel of wisdom, but when 

we read her Apothegms and Essays and Witty Sayings we are 
more impressed by her accurate memory of Bacon and other 
earlier essayists than by any profound knowledge of life on 
her own part. 


Mrs. Eleanor James ! was a writer on religious and political 
topics. No complete list of her works has ever yrs Eleanor 
been compiled. She gained publicity for her re- James 
ligious views by numerous single printed sheets iii 
between 1685 and 1715. John Dunton described her husband 
as being well known because he was an excellent printer, and 
“something the better known for being the husband of that she- 
state-politician, Mrs. Eleanor James.” She is said to have con- 
stituted herself a sort of “adviser to reigning sovereigns” from 
Charles II to George I, whom she visited in turn for counsel 
and admonition. Her chief published works are on religious 
controversy. Her Vindication of the Church of England (1687) 
created considerable antagonism. In answer to a satirical 
Address of thanks io Mrs. James on behalf of the Church of Eng- 
land she wrote Mrs. James’s Defence. A lady also appeared in 
the lists against her in a book entitled Elizabeth Rowe’s Short 
Answer to Eleanor James’s Long Preamble or Vindication of the 
new Test. Mrs. James’s Apology (1694) and her Reasons humbly 
presented to the Lords Spiritual and Temporal (1715) complete 
the list of her more important publications. 

1 Dunton: Life and Errors, p. 334; Nichols: Anecdotes of Bowyer, p. 609; 
Ibid.: Literary Anecdotes, vol. 1, p. 305; Dryden: Works (ed. by Scott), vol. 
x, p- 110. 


104 THE LEARNED LADY 


Mrs. Newcome’s Enquiry into the Evidences of the Christian 
Mrs. Newcome  (feligion was published in 1728. Mr. Bowyer 
(a. 1728) says that she was by every one accounted a 
most excellent and worthy woman, and that her learning was 
attested by more than one volume. Mr. Grey mentioned her 
in his Hudibras as “the very learned lady” who gave him the 
note about Penguins in Book I. Nichols quotes a Mr. “T. F.” 
who says that she had great fame for learning, but adds cau- 
tiously: “All that I know of that matter is, that as often as 
I have been in company with her, and when things were 
thrown out designedly to tempt her to speak, and discover her- 
self, as the armour produced to Achilles, it never took effect. 
So that I can not speak of her learning from my own knowledge; 
but if she was not that, she was something better, a very good 
woman.” ! 


The most distinguished woman in the field of polemics in the 
Catherine Trotter, first half of the eighteenth century was Cath- 
Mrs. Cockburn _erine Trotter, better known as Mrs. Cockburn. 
(1679-1749) The contemporary recognition accorded Mrs. 
Cockburn is to-day the most surprising fact about her. Her 
father was a Scotchman, a commander in the royal navy, and 
highly thought of by Charles II, but his death at sea in 1683, 
and many ensuing disastrous business complications, left the 
family in serious financial difficulties. Mrs. Trotter was, how- 
ever, nearly related to the Duke of Lauderdale and the Earl of 
Perth, a fact which secured her social recognition no matter 
how narrow her circumstances. Catherine, her youngest child, 
began writing poetry at a very early age. She also early showed 
unusual mental alertness, for “she both learned to write and 
made herself mistress of the French language, by her own ap- 
plication and diligence, without any instructor.” In Latin and 
Logic she had some guidance. Logic was so interesting to her 
that while still young she drew up an abstract of its principles, 
for her own use. 

1 Nichols: Anecdotes of Bowyer, p. 612. 


IN ENGLAND FROM 1650 TO 1760 105 


Catherine’s first extant poem was a thanksgiving in heroic 
verse for the recovery of Mr. Bevil Higgons from small-pox. 
She was then fourteen, but the labored lines have a kind of 
heavy maturity prophetic of her later verse. In her seven- 
teenth year she entered fully upon her literary career. For 
thirteen years she devoted herself to study and writing, and if 
applause from high authorities could justify her serious pre- 
occupation with things of the mind, such justification was 
hers in full measure. Before she was seventeen her tragedy, 
Agnes de Castro, was acted at Drury Lane. It was by the advice 
of the Earl of Dorset and Middlesex that she had allowed “this 
little off-spring of her early muse”! to try its fortune in the 
world, and such success as it had must be attributed largely to 
the protection of influential patrons. But with or without pa- 
trons, whatever Miss Trotter did was sure to win praise. When 
she wrote a eulogistic poem to Congreve on his Mourning Bride, 
in 1697, he expressed himself as heartily vexed that her lines 
came too late for publication with his play, and said of her 
poetical commendation, “It is the first thing, that ever hap- 
pened to me, upon which I should make it my choice to be 
vain.” 

In 1698 there appeared, at the new theater in Lincoln’s Inn 
Fields, Miss Trotter’s second tragedy entitled The Fatal Friend- 
ship. Mr. Betterton, Mr. Verbruggen, Mr. Thurmond, Mrs. 
Barry, and Mrs. Bracegirdle, took the chief parts. The play 
ran several nights and was seen occasionally on the stage until 
far down in the eighteenth century. Its immediate success was 
great and the praise that poured in upon the nineteen-year-old 
author must have been bewilderingly sweet. Mr. Higgons 
evened up the score for the small-pox poem by some verses 
which declared her direct descent from Sappho. Mr. Harman 
said that she maintained the true empire of the stage along 
with Congreve, Granville, and a few others “well read in 
honour’s school.” From “an unknown hand” came a poem 
addressed to “my much esteemed Friend.” This author writes 

1 Cockburn: Works, vol. 1, p. vi. 


106 THE LEARNED LADY 


of his consuming anxiety at the beginning of the play, and of the 
joy that gushed forth as he observed its success. The impres- 
sion from his poem is that he had known the play intimately 
before its appearance. According to “the elegant pen of Mr. 
John Hughes” Miss Trotter’s “virgin voice offends no virgin 
ear,” her chaste thoughts and clean expressions set her nobly 
apart as a reformer of the stage, and she is a successful cham- 
pion of her sex, since her genius has destroyed the “Salique law 
of wit” established by men. So pleased was Mr. Farquhar 
with The Fatal Friendship that he sent his first comedy Love 
and a Bottle, which had “been scandalously aspersed for af- 
fronting the ladies,” “to stand its tryal before one of the fair- 
est of the sex, and the best judge.”” And he adds his thanks for 
the “favour and honour” she showed him by appearing on his 
third night. He concludes his letter with a double compliment: 
“But humbly to confess the greatest motive, my passions were 
wrought so high by representation of Fatal Friendship, and 
since raised so high by a sight of the beautiful author, that I 
gladly catched this opportunity of owning myself your most 
faithful and humble servant.” Mrs. Manly also gave a gener- 
ous tribute to her young fellow-aspirant for stage honors: 


Orinda and the Fair Astrea gone 

Not one was found to fill the Vacant Throne; 

Aspiring Man had quite regain’d the Sway, 

Again had Taught us humbly to Obey; 

Till you (Nature’s third start, in favour of our Kind) 

With stronger ‘Arms, their Empire have disjoyn’d, ete. 
Dela Manley 


After The Fatal Friendship Miss Trotter’s work for the stage 
need not be particularly dwelt upon. She had a comedy brought 
out at Drury Lane in 1701. A new tragedy in the same year 
at Drury Lane, and a tragedy at the Haymarket in 1706, com- 
plete the list. Some occasional poems appeared during this 
period. In 1700 she was one of the nine ladies who wrote 
on the death of Dryden, under the title The Nine Muses; or 
Poems written by as many ladies on the death of the late famous 


IN ENGLAND FROM 1650 TO 1760 107 


John Dryden, Esq. In 1704 she entered the lists with Mr. 
Addison and Mr. John Philips in celebrating the victory of 
Blenheim, but she did not venture to publish her poem till 
the manuscript had been submitted to the Duke of Marl- 
borough. When the duke and the duchess and the lord treas- 
urer Godolphin declared themselves “greatly pleased’? she 
sent her lines to the press. 

Besides her dramatic and poetical work Miss Trotter wrote 
in prose on critical and theological subjects. An interesting dis- 
quisition on “the poets of the last age” appeared in the dedi- 
cation of her The Unhappy Penitent in 1701. Of Shakespeare, 
Dryden, Lee, and Otway she speaks with independent judg- 
ment and considerable discrimination. But none of the works 
so far listed are those on which her fame rested. It was not in 
- poetry, drama, or literary criticism that she found satisfaction. 
Religion and philosophy were her true field. Locke’s Essay 
concerning Human Understanding was published in 1690, and 
among the antagonistic criticisms it called forth were three 
series of Remarks published anonymously in 1697 and 1699. 
Young as she was Miss Trotter pursued the controversy with 
the keenest interest and in 1701 she drew up a Defence of 
The Essay of Human Understanding. Mr. George Burnet of 
Kemney, then in Holland, and Mrs. Burnet, the wife of Bishop 
Burnet, were entrusted with the secret of her Defence, and both 
advised anonymous publication, agreeing with her that her 
youth and sex would, if known, count against a work of that 
nature. Her Defence appeared in print in 1702. Mrs. Burnet 
on finding that the Bishop, Mr. John Norris, and Mr. Locke 
himself, were highly pleased with it, could keep the secret no 
longer.! Mr. Locke sent Miss Trotter a present of books and a 
letter in which he expressed his gratitude for “an opportunity 
to own.you for my protectress, which is the greatest honour 
my Essay could have procured me. Give me leave therefore 
to assure you, that as the rest of the world take notice of the 


1 Mrs. Cockburn: Works: Letters to G. Burnet, Dec. 9, 1701; Feb. 2, 1703- 
04, vol. 1, pp. 153, 166. Also Letter from Mrs. Burnet, vol. 1, p. xvii. 


108 THE LEARNED LADY 


strength and clearness of your reasoning, so I can not but be 
extremely sensible, that it was employed in my behalf.” 1 

A second pamphlet was entitled A discourse concerning a 
guide in Controversies and grew out of her own spiritual con- 
flicts. Although of a Protestant family she had become a 
Catholic early in life, but had gradually found herself less and 
less in harmony with that church till 1707 when, in this Dis- 
course, she announced her return to the Church of England. 

The polemical years between 1701 and 1707 had been diver- 
sified by several love affairs. Mr. George Burnet of Kemney, 
Mr. Fenn who was an eloquent young clergyman,? Mr. Cock- 
burn, “and some others,” are indicated in her letters. Miss 
Trotter’s letters to two of these lovers, Mr. Fenn and Mr. 
Burnet, are nearly as polemical as her Defence and Discourse. 
She uses all her old Art of Logic to reason her lovers into friends. 
She had, in fact, no particular respect for the passion of love as a 
factor in human life. She apologized for having given it so 
important a place in her plays, for it was “not noble enough to 
fill a whole tragedy.” > When Mr. Burnet professed “the most 
passionate ardour of mind and soul”’ for her,* she responded 
with a eulogy of “just and beneficent friendship.” “It is only 
that niggard passion, which is distinguish’d by the name of 
love, that excludes all but one object from having a part in it, 
and is not satisfied without monopolizing the affections of the 
heart.” > She offered Mr. Burnet “due gratitude’ and she 
surely owed him some return for the pains he took to spread the 
fame of her works. He wrote so highly of her to the Princess 
Sophia that the royal lady wrote in answer: “Je suis charmée 
du portrait avantageux, que vous me faites de la nouvelle Sappho 
Ecossoise, qui semble meriter les eloges, que vous luy donnez.”’ § 

Miss Trotter’s letters to Mr. Cockburn, whom she married 
in 1708, are also full of argument and business. If she had a 

1 Mrs, Cockburn: Works, vol. 1, p. xx. 

2 Ibid. See Letters to Mr. Cockburn, June 23 to Sept. 21, 1707; Letters to 
Mr. Fenn, July 18 to Oct. 31, 1707. 


3 Tbid., vol. 1, p. xii. 4 Tbid., vol. u, p. 171. 
5 Ibid., vol. 11, p. 174, 6 [bid., vol. 1, p. xxv. 


IN ENGLAND FROM 1650 TO 1760 109 


deep affection for him she certainly never allowed herself to 
speak out. She says that their chief aim in marriage was to 
assist each other in performing those duties that flow from the 
love of God.! Of the ensuing twenty years she wrote in 1738 as 
follows: “Being married in 1708, I bid adieu to the muses, and 
so wholly gave myself up to the cares of a family, and the edu- 
cation of my children, that I scarce knew there was any such 
thing as books, plays, or poems stirring in Great Britain.” ? 
It was an attack on Mr. Locke that again drew her into public 
controversy. Dr. Winch Holdsworth published in 1720 a ser- 
mon on Mr. Locke’s “false reasonings”’ against the resurrection 
of the same body. The sermon came to her hands some years 
later and she published in 1726-27 A Letter to Dr. Holdsworth. 
In 1727 he published A Defence of the Doctrine of the Resurrec- 
tion of the same Body. Her answer, A Vindication of Mr. Locke’s 
Christian Principles, remained in manuscript till the publica- 
tion of her works in 1751. She also wrote in 1739 Remarks upon 
some Writers in the Controversy concerning the Foundation of 
Moral Duty and Moral Obligation which was published in 1743 
in The History of the Works of the Learned. In 1747 she entered 
upon a confutation of Dr. Rutherforth’s Essay on the Nature 
and Obligations of Virtue. Her Remarks on this Essay was 
published by Mr. Warburton with a laudatory Preface in which 
he spoke of her “fine genius,” “clearness of expression, strength 
of reason, precision of logic, and attachment to truth.” 

From 1731 to 1748 there is a series of letters between Mrs. 
Cockburn and Anne Hepburn (afterwards Mrs. Arbuthnot), 
her niece. It is almost entirely a literary and religious cor- 
respondence and shows that Miss Hepburn’s interests were 
on almost as high a plane as her aunt’s. A list of the books 
they exchanged and commented on would include most of the 
important new works in England during the first half of the 
century. The most interesting literary taste revealed is Mrs. 
Cockburn’s partiality for Pope. In 1738 she wrote him a long 
letter in which she said, “Your Epistle to Dr. Arbuthnot, and 

1 Mrs. Cockburn: Works, vol. u, p. 206. 2 Ibid., vol. 1, p. xi. 


110 THE LEARNED LADY 


Essay on Man, gave me some idea of your morals. But when I 
read your private letters, where, as you express it, you throw 
yourself out upon paper, I thought I saw your heart open and 
undisguised. I was charmed with the sincere, ingenuous, un- 
suspecting friend, the unwilling enemy, the benevolent mind, 
extending to all parties, all religions, all mankind; the filial 
piety, the tender concern for a mother’s approaching death, 
at an age, when most men would have considered theirs only 
as a useless burden. In short, I saw so many amiable qualities 
opening on every different occasion, that I began as much to 
admire the valuable’ man as the great genius.” She chides 
him gently for thinking too lightly of his genius, for while he 
is measuring syllables and coupling rhymes to such excellent 
moral ends, she is ready to assure him of a final “Well done, 
thou good and faithful servant.’ It is a pity this epistle was 
never sent. It would doubtless have been almost as surpris- 
ing to the wicked wasp of Twickenham as to the crowd of 
enemies for whose benefit he was preparing the New Dunciad. 

Mr. Birch, who edited Mrs. Cockburn’s Works in 1751, said 
of her: 


Posterity at least will be solicitious to know, to whom they will owe 
the most demonstrative and perspicuous reasonings, upon subjects 
of eternal importance; and her own sex is entitled to the fullest in- 
formation about one, who has done such honour to them, and raised 
our ideas of their intellectual power, by an example of the greatest 
extent of understanding and correctness of judgment. Antiquity, 
indeed, boasted of its female philosophers, whose merits have been 
drawn forth in an elaborate treatise of Menage. [Historia Mulierum 
Philosophorum, 8vo. Lyons, 1690.] But our own age and country may 
without injustice or vanity oppose to those illustrious ladies the de- 
fender of Locke and Clarke; who, with a genius equal to the most emi- 
nent of them, had the superior advantage of cultivating it in the only 
effectual method of improvement, the study of a real philosophy, and 
a theology worthy human nature, and its all perfect author. 


Mrs. Cockburn had a strong, clear, acute mind. The im- 
pression she made on the best thinkers in her generation is due 
to this fact, and, further, to the fact that she used her mental- 


IN ENGLAND FROM 1650 TO 1760 111 


ity on topics then counted vital. She was didactic, she was 
morally irreproachable, she was unassuming. That her editor’s 
confident prediction of her fame has been discredited by time, 
that she is in reality hardly so much as a name to-day, is due 
partly to the oblivion that has overtaken her subjects, but also, 
and even more justly, to the dead level of her excellence. 
She has no wit, no fancy, no imagination, no sprightliness of 
thought, no humor. Mary Astell and “Sophia” were occa- 
sionally roused to picturesque indignation. But not so with 
Mrs. Cockburn. She is as cold, as orderly, as unstimulating as 
a formula. 


Among dissenters there is less literary record. We find more 
among the Quakers than elsewhere, yet even Mrs. Margaret 
there not so much as might be expected from Fell (2614-1702) 
the fact of their recognition of the equality of the sexes. It was 
stated in their creed: “As we dare not encourage any ministry 
but that which we believe to spring from the influence of the 
Holy Spirit, so neither dare we attempt to restrain this minis- 
try to persons of any condition in life, or to the male sex alone; 
but as male and female are one in Christ, we hold it proper that 
such of the female sex as we believe to be endued with a right 
qualification for the ministry should exercise their gifts for the 
general edification of the Church.” ! As a rule, however, the 
Quaker women were too busy on their preaching tours to have 
much time for authorship. Margaret Fell is their chief repre- 
sentative writer.2 Her activities began before the Restoration. 
As the wife of Judge Fell of Swarthmore Hall she was of dis- 
tinct social importance, and she showed unusual ability in the 
conduct of the household affairs incident on her husband’s 
wealth and large landed properties. She was always exceedingly 
devout and Swarthmore Hall was traditionally recognized 
as the home of “lecturing ministers.” Among these itinerant 
speakers, in 1652, was George Fox. His brief sojourn at Swarth- 


1 Hill, Georgiana: Women in English Life, vol. 1, p. 248. 
2 Webb, Maria: The Fells of Swarthmoor Hail. 


112 THE LEARNED LADY 


more was epoch-making, for when Judge Fell returned from a 
distant visit he was met as he crossed Ulverston Sands by a 
solemn conclave of gentlemen on horseback whose purpose it 
was to announce that his wife and most of his household had 
become Quakers. On investigation he became himself at least 
sufficiently sympathetic with the new views not to interfere with 
his wife’s convictions. For half a century she was identified 
with Quaker interests. The great dining-room at Swarthmore 
was for many years the regular meeting-place of the Friends. 
In 1669, eleven years after the death of Judge Fell, Margaret 
married George Fox, and till his death in 1691 she gave her 
time, her thought, her money, to a defense of persecuted Quak- 
ers. Three of her daughters became preachers. She traveled 
from jail to jail, from house to house, to comfort the imprisoned 
and their families, and from meeting to meeting to preach the 
word. As the “nursing mother” of the church she had an im- 
mense correspondence. The petitions to the king and to power- 
ful noblemen were often composed and personally presented by 
her. The importance attached to her advice and opinions is in- 
dicated by the hundreds of letters still extant addressed to her 
by the preachers who gathered about George Fox. During her 
most active years the practical conduct of church affairs oc- 
cupied her to the exclusion of other work. But earlier, especially 
during 1665-1668, she made use of the enforced leisure conse- 
quent on various imprisonments to write in defense of Quaker 
principles. Of the ten tracts thus produced one of the most 
interesting was on the vexed question of the right of women to 
preach and was entitled Women’s Speaking Justified Proved 
and Aliowed of by the Scriptures. 


Another important lady who, after long study in other re- 
Lae Finch ligions came finally into the Quaker faith, was 
Lady Conway Anne Finch, a daughter of Sir Henry Finch. In 
(d. 1679) 1651 she married Lord Conway and was estab- 
lished as mistress of Ragley Castle in Warwickshire. As a 
young woman she had been attracted by the teachings of 


IN ENGLAND FROM 1650 TO 1760 113 


Henry More, the Cambridge Platonist. After she became Lady 
Conway he spent much time at Ragley where he wrote several 
of his books. During his various absences Mr. More and Lady 
Conway corresponded regularly on theological subjects. The 
questions in her letters sufficiently indicate the metaphysical 
perplexities that absorbed her thoughts. She knew the learned 
tongues and read eagerly the works of “Plato, Plotinus, Philo 
Judzeus, and the Kabbala Denudata.” She was a theosophist 
and a mystic. The esoteric, the mysterious, the miraculous, 
captured her imagination. “Under her inspiration Ragley 
became the home of religious marvels.’’ One chapter of John 
Inglesant, the novel in which Mr. Shorthouse so sympatheti- 
cally described Little Gidding, is said to be based on the life at 
Ragley. Lady Conway suffered from headaches so severe and 
persistent as to defy the best skill of London and Paris. Under 
the influence of Mr. More, who said there might be “‘a sanative 
and healing contagion as well as a morbid and venemous,” she 
summoned to Ragley the famous Valentine Greatrakes, “the 
Stroker,” but the magic of his hands failed in her case. Her 
headaches made of her life one long disease, but never con- 
quered her intellectual eagerness and hardly abated her learned 
pursuits. 

When she finally joined the Quakers it was against the 
advice of Mr. More, but she was one, he said, “who never 
submitted all her judgment to any one.”’ Her friendship with 
Robert Barclay and William Penn followed her acceptance of 
the new doctrines. While Lady Conway was undoubtedly one 
of the most distinguished converts to the Quaker faith, her 
invalidism and then her death in 1679 interfered with any such 
active service as that of Margaret Fell. The two women were, 
moreover, temperamentally unlike. Margaret Fell, a de- 
scendant of Anne Askew, had the blood of the martyrs in her 
veins. A “cause” could capture her mind and heart. She was 
energetic, an organizer and administrator. Lady Conway, on 
the other hand, beyond almost any woman of her time, lived 
in things of the mind. 


114 THE LEARNED LADY 


Of Lady Conway’s numerous works only one has been 
printed. In 1690 there appeared at Amsterdam a collection of 
philosophical treatises written in Latin. The first one of the 
series was a translation of “a work by a certain English count- 
ess, learned beyond her sex.” Leibnitz, on the authority of 
Van Helmont, attributed this to Lady Conway. This treatise 
was re-translated into English in 1692.1 


Mrs. Jane Lead ? was a mystic and the founder of a sect. 
Jane Ward, She was the daughter of Schildknap Ward, of 
Mrs. Lead a good Norfolk family, and it is said that there 
(1623-1704) were no external influences to account for her 
unusual experiences. Asa child in the midst of the Christmas 
gayeties at her father’s house, she heard a miraculous voice 
that summoned her to a religious life. She became a widow 
while still young and thereafter followed without hindrance, 
in the completest seclusion, in London, her recognized voca- 
tion. She studied mystical works and had nightly prophetic 
visions which she recorded in her spiritual diary. Between 
1681 and 1702 she published fifteen volumes and another one 
appeared immediately after her death. In 1693 Mr. Francis 
Lee, a young Oxford man and a medical student at Leyden, 
visited her, gave allegiance to her doctrines, and devoted him- 
self to her service. Mr. Lee and Mrs. Lead became the center 
of an important theosophical organization called The Philadel- 
phian Society, which existed till 1702. Mrs. Lead died in 1704 
“in the 81st year of her age and the 65th of her vocation to the 
inward life.”” Mr. Lee wrote to the Countess Kniphausen and 
others in France and Germany a letter entitled The Last Hours 
of Jane Lead by an Eye and Ear Witness. Five years before her 
death Mrs. Lead’s spiritual diary was published under the 
title, A Fountain of Gardens, watered by the Rivers of Dwine 

1 Ward’s Life of Henry More (1710). Encyclopedia Britannica, 11th ed., un- 
der “More, Henry”; Dictionary of National Biography, under “Lady Con- 
way’; Webb, Mrs. Maria: The Penns and Penningtons of the Seventeenth 


Century, pp. 297, 313. 
2 British Quarterly Review, July, 1873, pp. 181-87. 


IN ENGLAND FROM 1650 TO 1760 115 


pleasure, and springing up in all the variety of spiritual plants, 
blown up by the pure Breath into Paradise. To which is pre- 
fixed, A Poem, introductory to the Philadelphia Age, called 
Solomon’s Porch, or The Beautiful gate to Wisdom’s Temple. 


One of the most notable women of the early eighteenth cen- 
tury was Susannah Wesley, the mother of John Susannah 
and Charles Wesley. She came of a fine old emia ibe 
Nottinghamshire family, and her father, Dr. (1670-1742) 
Annesley, a man of power and influence, “the St. Paul of the 
Nonconformists,”’ secured for his children an education suit- 
able to their birth. At twenty-one Susannah, a beautiful and 
gifted young woman, married Samuel Wesley and entered upon 
her career as wife of a rector of humble position and small 
means. 

It is said that large families either submerge the individ- 
ual, or result in characters of exceptionally fine discipline. 
From this test Susannah emerged triumphant. She was the 
twenty-fifth child of her father, and in the first twenty-one 
years of her married life she had nineteen children. So, as child 
and parent, she was always in close touch with many varied 
personalities, an experience the conditions of which demanded 
both firmness and flexibility. 

Her married life seemed made up of difficulties. Most of 
it was passed in a remote rectory, at Epworth, in the Lin- 
colnshire fens, among the crudest and most boorish people.' 
Not even the strictest economy could hold the outgo within 
the meager limits of the rector’s stipend. There were fevers, 
small-pox, and other diseases to combat, and five of the 
children died young. There were also disasters through fire 
and flood and through the hostility of malicious parishioners, 
but Mrs. Wesley held herself steadfast to her ideals. Her 
spirit was never daunted. In the most unpromising environ- 
ment, under the most adverse conditions, she created a family 
life remarkable for its order, serenity, good breeding, and aspira- 

1 Winchester: Life of Wesley, p.1. Telford: Life of Wesley, p. 52. 


116 THE LEARNED LADY 


tion. Even as a child the quality of her mind and character 
had been apparent. It is reported that at thirteen, having heard 
at home much discussion of the points at issue between the 
Nonconformists and the Church of England, she had re- 
viewed the questions for herself and had decided in favor of 
the Church. Throughout her married life she showed the same 
independence and self-reliance. Mr. and Mrs. Wesley were 
always very happy together, but she was in no sense the ideal 
submissive wife of the eighteenth century. She wrote to her 
son John when he was in Oxford, “’T is a misfortune almost 
peculiar to our family that your father and I seldom think 
alike.” 1 She considered King William a usurper and consist- 
ently refused to say Amen to the rector’s prayers for the new 
monarch. Mr. Wesley celebrated the victory of Blenheim in a 
poem, but Mrs. Wesley disapproved of the war and she wrote: 
“Since I am not satisfied of the lawfulness of the war, I cannot 
beg a blessing on our arms till I can have the opinion of one 
wiser and a more competent judge than myself in this point; 
namely, whether a private person that had no hand in the be- 
ginning of the war but did always disapprove of it may, not- 
withstanding, implore God’s blessing on it, and pray for the 
good success of those arms which were taken up, I think unlaw- 
fully.” And she declined to join in the worship on the day ap- 
pointed for prayers for the success of English troops.? 

Mrs. Wesley had a natural genius for teaching and she be- 
came the school-mistress of her family. Her methods were uni- 
form and rigorous. At five each child was given in one day, 
during two sessions of three hours each, such effective tutor- 
ing in the alphabet that by night he knew it and could begin 
reading the Book of Genesis the next day. The various studies 
counted necessary followed in due order. Each child was kept 
closely to the task in hand and the progress made was sur- 
prising. Mrs. Wesley said, “It is almost incredible what a child 
may be taught in a quarter of a year by a vigorous applica- 
tion if it have but tolerable capacity and good health.” The 

1 Winchester, Life of Wesley, p. 9. 2 Ibid., p. 8. 


IN ENGLAND FROM 1650 TO 1760 117 


virtues inculcated were prompt obedience, quiet manners, 
correct speech, and courtesy. The religious training of the 
children received especial emphasis. Mrs. Wesley wrote out 
for them a clear series of explanatory comments on the Cate- 
chism and the Creed, she trained them to take part in family 
devotions, and once a week she met each child for an hour 
of private religious conversation and instruction. So precious 
were these hours to the children that when John was a Fellow 
in Oxford, he wrote urging his mother to devote her thought 
and prayer to him during the Thursday evening hour that had 
been his. 

Mrs. Wesley’s devout ministrations to her own family, dur- - 
ing her husband’s absence, became known to some of the 
neighbors who desired to join her circle. The numbers in- 
creased so rapidly that on the first Sunday of February, 1712, 
more than two hundred were present and many went away for 
want of room. The curate objected to these meetings and Mr. 
Wesley wrote in deprecation of them. Mrs. Wesley, too, 
was seriously in doubt whether one of her sex could find Scrip- 
ture authority for thus breaking the bread of life to the people. 
But the manifest needs of the poor parishioners and their eager- 
ness for the gospel prevailed over all doubts and the meetings 
continued. 

The power of Mrs. Wesley in her own home and immediate 
neighborhood was, through her son John, felt throughout Eng- 
land. Mr. Winchester says truly: 


John Wesley was the son of his mother. From her he inherited his 
logical cast of mind, his executive capacity, his inflexibility of will, 
his union of independence of judgment with respect for authority, his 
deep religious temper. And all the characteristics were developed and 
fixed by his early training. His precision and order, his gift of organi- 
zation and mastery of details, his notions of education, even some 
specific rules and customs of his religious societies, can be traced to his 
mother’s discipline. It is often said that Methodism began in the Uni- 
versity of Oxford: with more truth it might be said that it began in 
Susannah Wesley’s nursery.? 


1 Life of Wesley, pp. 10-11. 


118 THE LEARNED LADY 


The religious writers so far mentioned only partially rep- 
resent the great amount of similar literary activity. In many 
homes where rank or wealth made social diversions an alluring 
possibility there was carried on by wives and daughters not only 
a life of austere piety and great practical benevolence, but a life 
also of intellectual ambitions and instincts. The fact that many 
of the questions which these ladies discussed are now dead 
issues cannot obscure the more significant fact that on ques- 
tions then counted vital they wrote. always with energy, often 
with logical acumen, and sometimes with effectiveness. The 
home and social life that emerges from scattered hints and 
records in these religious writings is as remote from that por- 
trayed in contemporary court memoirs or diaries as is the gen- 
eral tone of Paradise Lost or Pilgrim’s Progress, and is worth 
dwelling upon as illustrative of that body of almost unrecognized 
solid morality that gave to Jeremy Collier a background of public 
approval when he attacked the immorality of the stage, and 
through the stage, the immorality of the stage-going people. 


WRITERS ON PRACTICAL BENEFICENCE 


The piety that finds genuine expression in the writings of the 
seventeenth and eighteenth centuries had almost as frequent 
expression in the practical necessities of daily life. On the great 
ladies of the land was laid the responsibility for the physical 
well-being, the education, and the happiness of those beneath 
them in birth and wealth. Responsibilities now provided for 
by multifarious overworked organizations then devolved upon 
individuals. And many women in the distribution of their 
money and leisure showed so much insight and practical abil- 
ity as to become ruling influences in their communities. The 
fame of some of these women spread through the nation. The 
combination which they showed of munificent giving, on the 
one hand, and of rigid self-discipline, on the other, exalted them 
almost into saints. The two ladies who most fully illustrate the 
type are Mrs. Bovey and Lady Elizabeth Hastings. Their 
learning was chiefly in the realm of theology. 


IN ENGLAND FROM 1650 TO 1760 119 


Mrs. Bovey,! the daughter of a London merchant, was a 
great heiress and a great beauty and was con- catherine Riches, 
sequently much sought after. At fifteen she Mrs. Bovey 
married William Bovey, Esq., Lord of the 77726 
Manor of Flaxley, Gloucestershire. After seven years of un- 
happiness she was left a childless widow with a large fortune at 
her command. She refused to marry again, but entered into a 
close friendship with Mrs. Mary Pope. The two ladies lived to- 
gether in retirement for thirty-two years, making it the purpose 
of their lives to manage Mrs. Bovey’s fortune and estate and to 
dispose of most of the income in wisely regulated charities. Mrs. 
Bovey was the subject of much praise from all kinds of people. 
Mrs. Manley gives the following vivid picture of her: 

She is one of those lofty, black and lasting beauties that strike with 
Reverence, and yet Delight; there is no Feature in her Face, nor any 
thing in her Person, her Air and Manner, that could be exchanged 
for any others, and she not prove a Loser: Then as to her Mind and 
Conduct, her Judgment, her Sense, her Stedfastness, her Reading, 
her Wit and Conversation, they are admirable; so much above what 
is most lovely in the sex, shut but your Eyes, (and allow for the Musick 
of her Voice) your Mind would be charmed, as thinking yourself con- 
versing with the most knowing, most refined of ours; free from all 
Levity and Superficialness, her Sense is sold [solid?] and perspicuous. 
Lovely Porcia is so polite,so neat, so perfect an economist, that in 
taking in all the greater Beauties of Life, she does not disdain to stoop 
to the most inferiour; in short, she knows all that a Man can know, with- 
out despising what, as a woman, she should not be ignorant of. 

In 1714 Steele dedicated the second volume of his Ladies’ 
Inbrary to her. With his genius for giving delightful compli- 
ments, he says: “Thus with the charms of your own sex, and 
knowledge not inferior to the more learned of ours, a closet, 
a bower, or some scene of rural nature, has constantly robbed 
the world of a ladies appearance, who never was beheld but 
with gladness to her visitants, nor ever admired but with pain 
to herself.” 

1 Manley, Mrs.: The New Atalantis, vol. m, p. 245; Ballard: Memoirs, 
p. 440; cf. Notes and Queries, 2d Series, vol. 1x, pp. 221-22; Wills, Henry: ed. 
of Sir Roger de Coverley, pp. 170-74. 


120 THE LEARNED LADY 


Dr. Hickes, in the Preface to his Linguarum Septentrionalium 
Thesaurus (1702), eulogized this prestantissima & honestissima 
matrona as the Anglie nostre Hypatia Christiana. She had 
received no formal education, yet by frequent converse with 
some of the most learned men of the day and by intense appli- 
cation to study she gained a great share of knowledge. She 
was interested in educational matters, and she gave with par- 
ticular pleasure to organizations for the training of poor chil- 
dren. At her death Mrs. Pope, her executor, was instructed to 
pay large sums to such charitable schemes as the gray-coat 
school, the blue-coat school, the charity school of Christ’s 
Church Parish in Southwark, and a college to be founded in the 
Island of Bermuda. 

Mrs. Bovey’s attractive personality may be further empha- 
sized by the persistence of the rumor identifying her with “the 
perverse widow” whose charms and whose coldness destroyed 
the peace of Sir Roger de Coverley’s heart. Her beauty, her 
wealth, her learning, her kindness of heart, her general benef- 
icence, and, finally, her inaccessibility, made her admired, 
loved, and longed for, till she was idealized into something 
quite above human nature’s daily food. 

Catherine Riches’s father belonged to the wealthy merchant 
class of London. It would be interesting if we could know the 
kind of home life and training given to this young city heiress. 
Was it the unhappy disciplinary years of her married life that 
turned her so decisively from the pomps and pleasures appar- 
ently awaiting one so young and beautiful and rich? 


Lady Elizabeth Hastings was the daughter of Theophilus, 


Lady seventh earl of Huntingdon, by his first wife, 
bear through whom, in 1704, she came into a for- 
(1688-1739) tune and the possession of Ledstone Park, an 


estate near Pontefract, Yorkshire. From twenty-two to her 
death at fifty-seven Lady Elizabeth lived almost continuously 
at Ledstone. Of these thirty-five years not a striking event is 
recorded. Her days were “bound each to each by natural 


IN ENGLAND FROM 1650 TO 1760 121 


piety” and her tranquil life developed along an uninterrupted 
course of charity and devotion. 
To live in Yorkshire, in the eighteenth century, was to be 
buried. Social and intellectual life were alike without sus- 
tenance. Yet from this remote home Lady Elizabeth’s fame 
traveled to London and she became the subject of remarkable 
eulogies. Number 42 of The Tatler, written possibly by Con- 
greve, appeared in 1709 when the “divine Aspasia” had been 
but five years at Ledstone. She must have gone there with 
well-formed ideas of life, for with no vacillations, no period 
of experimentation, she seems to have entered immediately on 
that career of religious contemplation and good works which 
had, in five years, given her the reputation of being a “female 
philosopher” of the most exalted type. The Tatler paper says 
that she put into practice the schemes and plans the ancient 
sages had thought beautiful but inimitable. Steele, in The 
Tatler, number 49, gave perfect expression to the reverent 
admiration with which Lady Elizabeth had come to be re- 
garded: 


Aspasia must therefore be allowed to be the first of the beauteous 
Order of Love, whose unaffected freedom, and conscious innocence, 
give her the attendance of the graces in all her actions. The awful 
distance which we bear towards her in all our thoughts of her, are cer- 
tain instances of her being the truest object of love of any of her sex. 
In this accomplished lady, love is the constant effect, because it is never 
the design. Yet, though her mien carries much more invitation than 
command, to behold her is an immediate check to loose behaviour; 
and to love her is a liberal education. 


A somewhat closer view of the life of the Lady Elizabeth 
comes from casual notes by Thoresby who, in his travels about 
the northern counties between 1711 and 1724, frequently spent 
a few days at Ledstone. From the unconnected details scat- 
tered through his letters and diaries there emerges a fairly clear 
picture of a great house exactly ordered on the basis of the 
religious life. Private prayers, family devotions in which all the 
servants were included, at several stated hours each day, 


122 THE LEARNED LADY 


preparation for church festivals, frequent assemblages for the 
reading of sermons and holy books, refreshing conferences on 
mooted points of doctrine, friendly communion on the present 
and future joys of the Christian, filled the days to the exclusion 
of worldly interests. No mother superior could have felt a re- 
sponsibility more definite or have exerted a power more mi- 
nutely organized for the promotion of the spiritual welfare of 
those under her charge. 

Lady Hastings was also engaged in schemes of wider appli- 
cation. She became as noted for her benefactions as for the 
saintliness of her recluse life. “‘Human learning as the hand- 
maid of religion” was the basis on which her gifts were made. 
She therefore became definitely associated with the new 
schemes springing up in England for the education of poor boys 
and girls. In one of Thoresby’s visits they walked across the 
fields to see the new school she was building and endowing for 
the absolute maintenance and education of fourteen poor girls. 
The Victoria History of the County of Yorkshire records “Lady 
Hastings’s Schools” at Thorp Arch, Ledsham, Collingham, and 
Wick. The formal deeds conveying these schools to trustees 
are dated in 1738, probably because at that time she knew she 
could not recover from the cancerous affection of which she 
died the following year. But some of these schools had been 
established and supported by her much earlier. The account 
given of the Ledsham school is typical of the others: “These 
schools are part of the general charity founded by Lady Eliza- 
beth Hastings by deed 14 December, 1738. In a charity school 
for boys 20 scholars were to be taught and one youth between 
the ages of 17 and 23 as a charity school-master. The girls’ 
school was for 20 scholars, who were to be clothed partly out of 
the proceeds of their spinning. The boys’ school is now public 
and elementary, while the girls’ school gives a free education in 
elementary subjects and household duties. The expenses of 
this school amount to about £400 a year, and this is wholly 
derived from the endowment.” Lady Elizabeth also left a large 
bequest to Queen’s College, Oxford, for poor scholars from 


IN ENGLAND FROM 1650 TO 1760 123 


schools in Yorkshire, Westmoreland, and Cumberland.! Berke- 
ley’s missionary project found in her one of its most generous 
supporters, and her name headed many a list of charities for 
educational and religious purposes. . 

So well known did she become that in 1735 a remarkable 
tribute to her was planned and partly executed. An anonymous 
donor offered to The Gentleman’s Magazine a series of prizes 
for the four best poems entitled The Christian Hero. The chief 
prize was to be a “Gotp Mepau (intrinsic value about Ten 
Pounds) which shall have the Heap of the Rt. Hon. the Lady 
Exizaseta Hastines on one Side, and that of James Oglethorpe 
Esq. on the other, with this Motto, ENGLAND MAY CHALLENGE 
THE WoRLD, 1736.” 2 This announcement was in December, 
1735. In the January number for 1736 the editor expressed 
his great concern at having given offense to a Lady, whose 
name even they did not venture to mention again, by the pub- 
lication of the proposed Gold Medal prize without her con- 
sent.? In February the donor humbly asked her Ladyship’s 
pardon for the uneasiness he had so undesignedly caused her, 
saying that he had not the honor to know her personally, but 
had been animated solely by the feeling of respect and defer- 
ence due to the eminence of her character.* 

When Lady Hastings died, in 1739, The Genileman’s Maga- 
zine published a memorial notice said to be by Dr. Johnson. 
In heavy, analytic fashion it sums up her reputation for sanc- 
tity and benevolence, and closes with the statement that 
“scarce any age has afforded a greater Blessing to many, or a 
brighter Pattern to all.” > The year after her death, Law, the 
noted author of The Serious Call, cited Lady Hastings as a 
sufficient refutation of the charge that saintliness was not a 
natural product of the English Church. In 1741 Wilford’s stately 
folio contained a laudatory account of Lady Hastings, and in 
1742 Mr. Barnard published An Historical Character, relating 


1 A History of the County of Yorkshire, vol. 1, p. 499. 
2 The Gentleman’s Magazine, vol. 5, p. 778. 
3 Ibid., vol. 6, p. 42. 4 Ibid., vol. 6, p. 99. 5 Ibid., vol. 10, p. 36. 


124 THE LEARNED LADY 


to the holy and exemplary Life of the Right Honourable Lady 
Elizabeth Hastings. To which are added, 1. One of the Codicils 
of her last Will, setting forth her Devise of Lands to the Provost 
and Scholars of Queen’s College in Oxford, for the interest of 18 
Northern Schools. 2. Some Observations therefrom. 3. A Sched- 
ule of her other perpetual Charities, with the Principal Rules for 
their Administration. 

Few of the people who praised Lady Hastings knew her per- 
sonally. Even more strongly than in the case of Mrs. Bovey 
there seems to have grown up in the public mind a kind of 
idealized picture of her. She was a saint set apart from the 
world, not only by a voluntary isolation, but by virtue of her 
beauty, beneficence, and nobility. She was enshrined. The 
reverence, affection, and praise accorded her have a definite 
note of Platonism. She becomes an embodiment of the highest 
charm and excellence, and the actual “Lady Betty” seems 
lost in the process. 

What were the diversions at Ledstone? Lady Elizabeth’s four 
younger half-sisters, Anne, Frances, Catherine, and Margaret, 
usually lived with her. After the death of Lady Elizabeth, 
Margaret, who had become a convert to Methodism, married 
one of the leaders in that new communion and it was through 
her influence that Selina, the wife of Theophilus, the brother 
of these young ladies, was likewise converted to Methodism. 
The five sisters were apparently a unit in their predisposition 
to a religious life. But they were too young and too free not to 
have had some other elements in their life. Had they any such 
relief as the book-binding at Little Gidding? Our knowledge 
of the life at Ledstone is tantalizingly incomplete because 
every one who wrote about Lady Elizabeth took at once an 
exalted tone, and generalized his picture into abstractions. 


Closely connected with Lady Hastings and the life at Led- 
Lady Huntingdon stone is another leader in the religious world, 
(1707-91) the famous Lady Huntingdon, the wife of Lady 
Hastings’s brother Theophilus. Margaret Hastings had ac- 


IN ENGLAND FROM 1650 TO 1760 125 


cepted the doctrines of the Methodists and through her influ- 
ence Lady Huntingdon allied herself with the same obscure 
body. Lady Huntingdon was from childhood introspective 
and. religious. As the daughter of Earl Ferrars and the wife 
of the Earl of Huntingdon, a brilliant social career was almost 
inevitable. But in the midst of the splendid scenes in which 
she took a vivacious and apparently happy part she was 
spiritually aloof. She was always resisting the encroachments 
of the world, and striving by self-denial, a rigid course of de- 
votional exercises, and systematic beneficences, to secure in- 
ward peace. But she never came into a free and joyous reli- 
gious consciousness till she accepted the new doctrines taught 
by the group of Oxford men known as Methodists.! In 1739 
she sent for John and Charles Wesley to visit her and she be- 
came a fearless advocate of their views. After her husband’s 
death in 1746 she devoted her time, her great wealth, and her 
influence to the cause of Methodism. With several clergymen, 
her two daughters, her sisters, Anne and Frances, and a few 
friends, she made a sort of home missionary tour from Bath 
through Wales for the purpose of studying the needs of the poor 
in the matter of religious education. In 1748-49 she opened her 
fine mansion in Park Street, London, for Methodist preaching 
services. The most distinguished men and women of the time 
attended these services, but not always as reverent listeners. 
The whole scheme was met with varying degrees of ridicule. 
Coventry wrote a description of the meetings at Park Lane, it 
is supposed, in his account of “Lady Harridan” and her as- 
sembly: 


Tt was a sisterhood of the godly, met together to bewail the vanities 
of human life, and congratulate one another on their breaking from 
the enchantments of a sinful world. 

The causes which had converted them to Methodism, were as va- 
rious as the characters of the converts. Some, the ill success of their 
charms had driven to despair; others, a consciousness of too great 


1 Lady Huntingdon and her Friends. Compiled by Mrs. Helen C. Knight, 
p. 18. r% 


126 THE LEARNED LADY 


success had touched with repentance. .. . But the greater part, like 
the noble president, were women fatigued and worn out in the vani-’ 
ties of life, the superannuated jades of pleasure, who, being grown sick 
of themselves, and weary of the world, were now fled to Methodism, 
as the newest sort of folly that had lately been invented.} 


One particularly offensive element in Methodism to people 
who set store by birth and breeding was its leveling effect. So- 
cial position counted for little in the face of the all-important 
classification into saints and sinners. The Duchess of Bucking- 
ham wrote in violent protest: “The doctrines of these preachers 
are most repulsive, and strongly tinctured with impertinence 
and disrespect towards their superiors, in perpetually endea- 
voring to level all ranks and do away with all distinctions. It 
is monstrous to be told that you have a heart as sinful as 
the common wretches that crawl upon the earth. This is highly 
offensive and insulting, and I cannot but wonder that your 
ladyship should relish any sentiments so much at variance with 
high rank and good breeding.” ? 


1 Coventry, Francis: Pompey the Little, bk. 1, chap. xb. 

2 This conception of a divinely authorized aristocracy governed by a special 
set of laws tallies with the opinion formulated by Dr. George Hickes in a ser- 
mon preached before the Lord Mayor and Aldermen of London in 1684. Dr. 
Hickes justified the presence of the poor in the body politic, as necessary to the 
very existence of the State: 

“But this Civil Equality is morally impossible, because no Commonweal, 
little.gr great, can subsist without Poor. They are necessary, for the establish- 
ment of Superiority, and Subjection in Humane Societies, where there must 
be Members of Dishonour, as well as Honour, and some to serve and obey, 
as well as others to command. The Poor are the Hands and Feet of the Body 
Politick, the Gibeonttes and Nethinims in all Countries, who hew the Wood, and 
draw the Water of the Rich. They Plow our Lands, and dig our Quarries, and 
cleanse our Streets, nay, those, who fight our battels in the defence of their 
Country, are the Poor Souldiers, who, as the Legions of Ble@cus once com- 
plained in a Mutiny, sell their lives for seven pence a day. As there must be 
Rich to be, like the Centurian in the Gospel, in Authority: so there must be 
Poor, to whom they may say, Go unto one, and he goeth, and to another come, and 
he cometh; but were all equally rich, there could be no subordination, none to 
command, nor none to serve. But in such case, the Body Politick must dis- 
solve, as the Natural body was like to do in the Fable of Agrippa, when the 
rest of the Members would work no longer for the Belly, which, they thought 
did nothing at all.” 


IN ENGLAND FROM 1650 TO 1760 127 


The fruition of Lady Huntingdon’s remarkable work belongs 
later in the century, but its inception is between 1739 and 
1760 and is of great importance. 


DRAMATIC WRITERS 


In July, 1867, there was dispersed at Sotheby’s rooms the 
library of the Reverend A. J. Stainforth. “The collection was 
formed entirely of works of British and American poetesses and 
female dramatic writers. The books were arranged in over 
three thousand lots, and the catalogue extends to 166 pages.” 
That Mr. Stainforth spared neither money nor diligence in 
securing the books for this collection is evident from a single 
illustration, namely, his search for so obscure a book as 
Eliza’s Babes. “When Mr. Stainforth was forming his col- 
lection of Female Poets without regard to cost, he failed to 
procure a copy of Eliza’s Babes, although the hue and cry was 
circulated far and near.” + I have not had access to this cata- 
logue and I do not know how many items the “three thousand 
lots” contain, nor how many individual names are catalogued. 
If the arrangement is chronological it would doubtless serve 
to indicate the very rapid spread of female authors after about 
1750. Yet even the century from 1650 to 1750 is not without its 
large contribution. In the preceding sections of this study there 
has been some indication of the mass of devotional and polemi- 
cal writing by women. Among poets, playwrights, essayists, 
novelists, and letter-writers we shall find not only an even 
greater volume of production, but work of higher intrinsic value. 


The Duchess of Newcastle wrote numerous plays. Twenty- 
one were published in 1662, and in 1668 five more appeared. 


1 In 1656 there appeared a book by Elizabeth Major entitled Honey on the Rod, 
or a Comfortable Contemplation for one in Affliction, with Sundry Poems. By the 
Unworthiest of the Servants of the Lord Jesus Christ. In 1652 had appeared anony- 
mously Eliza’s Babes, or the Virgin’s Offerings. A detailed examination of the 
two books leads to a surmise that they are by the same author. What is prob- 
ably a unique copy of Eliza’s Babes is in the British Museum. (Notes and 
Queries, Tth Series, vol. m1, p. 502.) 


128 THE LEARNED LADY 


They are described as hardly more than allegorical dialogues 
TE Dichees arranged in successive scenes, but without plot, 
of Newcastle and showing no power of dramatic portrayal. 
(cir. 1625-1673) The Duchess herself is evidently the original 
of several of the characters. In her plays as in her scientific 
studies the particular boast of the Duchess is that whatever 
she writes is spun out of her own fancy: 


But noble readers, do not think my plays 

Are such as have been writ in former days; 

As Johnson, Shakespear, Beaumont, Fletcher writ, 
Mine want their learning, reading, language, wit. 
The Latin phrases, I could never tell, 

But Johnson could, which made him write so well. 
Greek, Latin poets I could never read, 

Not their historians, but our English Speed: 

I could not steal their wit, nor plots out-take; 

All my plays plots, my own poor brain did make. 
From Plutarch’s story, I ne’er took a plot, 

Nor from romances, nor from Don Quixote.! 


It goes without saying that these plays were not suited for 
stage presentation, and, in point of fact, very few of them were 
ever put into rehearsal. One of the plays that did appear drew 
a great crowd, but the motive was curiosity to see the Duchess 
rather than any interest in the play. Pepys, who went to hear 
this play March 30, 1667, wrote concerning it, and its author: 


The whole story of this lady is a romance and all she does is ro- 
mantic. Her footmen in velvet coats, and herself in antique dress, as 
they say; and was the other day at her own play, “The Humorous 
Lovers”; the most ridiculous thing that ever was wrote, but she and 
her Lord mightily pleased with it: and she at the end, made her re- 
spects to the players, and did give them thanks. There is as much 
expectation of her coming to Court, that so people may come to see 
her, as if it were the Queen of Sheba. 


The only important dramatic work by a woman during the 
second half of the seventeenth century was by Mrs. Behn. 


1 Cibber: Lives of the Poets, vol. 11, p. 168. 


IN ENGLAND FROM 1650 TO 1760 129 


She was born at Wye, in Kent.!. While she was still very 
young the Amis family went to Surinam, West apnea amis, 
Indies, where Aphra’s girlhood was spent. At Mrs. Behn 
about twenty-three 2 she returned to England ‘%647689) 

and soon thereafter married Mr. Behn, a London merchant 
of Dutch parentage. At his death, before 1666, she was left 
nearly penniless. For a short time she was in Holland as a 
secret political agent for the English court. But her services 
received scant official recognition and the pay was so meager 
and uncertain that she returned to England and began to look 
about for other means of support. The new passion for the 
theater was not yet exhausted and she turned instinctively to 
play-writing as her most hopeful resource. During the years 
1670-1689 her literary output extended into many other fields 
and shows continuous work at high pressure. Not only was 
she one of the chief assets of the Duke’s Theater as a play- 
wright, but she also translated French verse and prose; she 
wrote numerous occasional poems; she edited miscellanies; 
and she wrote novels. Her comedies had a most flattering con- 
temporary vogue and some of them maintained their popu- 
larity well into the next century. She satisfied the taste of the 
day for rapid, bustling plots, with many and varied characters, 
and her intrigues were cleverly manipulated, while she sur- 
passed most of her contemporaries in vivacious, easy, rapid 
dialogue. She is never dull or insipid. Her plays show that 
she had a vigorous mind, an overflow of spirits, a reckless 
mental energy. There is apparent a sense of power conscious 
of itself and careless of precedents or restrictions. In defiance 
of Ben Jonson, Dryden, and Shadwell she spoke contemptu- 
ously of “the musty unities.” The material for her plays she 
took wherever she found it, from preceding plays, from ro- 
mances, from real life, used it, made it over, and often so 
improved it that she could justifiably laugh at charges of 
plagiarism. One charge she could not evade and that had to 


1 Lady Winchilsea: Circuit of Apollo, note. (Ed. Reynolds, Myra.) 
? Behn, Aphra: Works, 6 vols.; Cibber, Lives of the Poets, vol. 01, pp. 17-23. 


130 THE LEARNED LADY 


do with the immorality of her writings. Dryden, Shadwell, 
Wycherley, and Etherege, and the audiences who applauded 
their plays, seemed to find the vis comica in an open indecency 
of character, situation, and conversation that is to-day almost 
unbelievable. And of Mrs. Behn it must be admitted that she 
vied with the most corrupt. She said, in extenuation, as Dry- 
den also said in answer to Jeremy Collier’s strictures, that she 
wrote to please. She did not consider comedy “a reforming or 
converting agent,” it was meant to be “an entertainment.” 
Her emphasis on the vicious elements of the life about her was 
a clear case of supply and demand, but it had an unhappy 
personal result. There early gathered about her name a hostile 
tradition based on the fact that she was not only a woman 
writer, but an eminently successful woman writer, and on the 
further fact that, being a woman, she had not the modest re- 
serve for which the chaste Orinda was idolized, but presented 
debaucheries in the bold and open manner characteristic of 
contemporary male playwrights. This hostile tradition, crys- 
tallized by Pope in a witty couplet,! became a commonplace 
of adverse criticism, and Astrzea’s undeniable talents have sunk 
into oblivion. A general revival of Mrs. Behn’s comedies 
would be impossible, undesirable, but by the student of social 
and political history in the Restoration period they cannot 
be ignored. 

Mrs. Behn’s novels are now as little known as her plays, but 
in her own day were very popular. Oroonoko, the first and by 
far the best, was based on her life in Surinam. At a time when 
French heroic romances, with their high-flown adventures, 
unreal characters, and stilted dialogue, were the only works 
of fiction, Mrs. Behn’s short, simple, vigorous, and affecting 
story of real life comes with a startling sense of novelty.2 The 
vivid portrayal of the cruelties incident to the slave trade, 
though probably written without didactic intent, gives the story 
a modern humanitarian note not unprophetic of Uncle Tom’s 


1 The Epistle to Augustus, ll. 290-91. 
2 Kavanagh, Julia. English Women of Letters, vol. 1, chap. u. 


Sart 


S S853 
RSS 


MRS. APHRA BEHN 


From a picture by Mary Beale in the collection of his Grace the Duke of Buckingham 
Drawn by T. Uwins. Engraved by J. Fittler, A.R.A. From an engraving 
in Effigies Poeticae, London, 1824, Vol. II 


IN ENGLAND FROM 1650 TO 1760 131 


Cabin. And the description of the Indian Prince as the ideal 
natural man, his innate virtues in their pristine purity un- 
vitiated by civilization, foreshadows the theories of Rousseau. 
The descriptions of nature, however exaggerated, are vivid 
and attractive, and show a delight in scenic detail not found 
again in fiction before Mrs. Collyer in 1730. Thus in four ways, 
choice of real life as a theme, interest in scenery, emphasis on 
the natural man, and on humanitarianism, Mrs. Behn’s little 
story links itself with the novel of the future rather than with 
the romances of the past. In the plays Mrs. Behn showed 
exceptional ability in a realm in which women have seldom 
excelled. In her novels she marked out a path where women 
have gained marked literary success. 

In one other way she is an important, outstanding figure. 
She was the first woman in England who made authorship a 
profession, the first one who definitely set out to earn her 
living by her pen. It is unfortunate that the first literary lady 
to achieve “economic independence” should likewise be the 
first whose writings were notably immoral. But it is a law of 
human nature that an unaccustomed freedom seldom contents 
itself in its early exercise of power with destroying merely the 
unjust bonds by which it has been confined. Freedom is 
likely to begin by being license. And when Aphra Behn so 
far defied convention as to compete with men as a playwright 
on the public stage, when she openly criticized her contempo- 
raries and boasted that her comedies did not fall below most 
that she read, she had so set herself apart in an unfeminine 
realm that prudishness and decency fell together. Psychologi- 
cally the actress and the writer of comedies seem to have 
gone through similar experiences. 


Mrs. Behn had no feminine contemporary rivals, but later 
in the century a number of women attempted Plays between 
to write for the stage. In Genest’s record for 1696 and 1706 
Drury Lane and Lincoln’s Inn Fields seven plays by six women 
are listed in 1696. In the ensuing ten years at least eighteen 


132 THE LEARNED LADY 


more plays by women appeared. This exceptional activity 
did not pass without satiric comment. In 1697 “W. M.’s” 
Female Wits,! with its attack on Miss Trotter, Mrs. Manley, 
and Mrs. Pix, was acted six times without intermission, a run 
showing exceptional popularity. In 1702 the hostility of the 
wits towards women playwrights was again voiced in Gildon’s 
The Two Stages.? Genest says that about this time “prejudice 
against females rose so high that Mrs. Centlivre in Stolen 
Heiress and Mrs. Pix in Conquest of Spain spoke of their plays 
as if by men.” * The authors of these twenty-five plays were 
Miss Trotter, Mrs. Pix, Mrs. Manley, Mrs. Centlivre, Mrs. 
Wiseman, “A Lady,” “A Young Lady,” “A Lady of Quality,” 
and “A Club of Ladies.” Fourteen of the plays were tragedies, 
the best one being, probably, Miss Trotter’s Fatal Friendship, 
almost the only one of the fourteen that survived on the stage 
after its initial season. The writers of comedy were more 
successful. 

Few of these authors need particular notice. Miss Trotter’s 
work has already been discussed.* Mrs. Manley’s three plays 
appeared at ten-year intervals, 1696, 1706, 1717. They were 
unsuccessful on the stage and they have no qualities that 
would claim the reader’s attention. It is in fiction, not in 
drama, that Mrs. Manley gained her reputation. 


Mrs. Pix, daughter of the Reverend Roger Griffith, Vicar of 


Mrs. Pix Nettlested in Oxfordshire, and wife of George 
(1666-17207) Pix, a merchant tailor of London, was thirty 


when she brought out her first play. During the ensuing ten 
years she put on the stage five tragedies, one comedy, and pos- 
sibly other plays not under hername. Her tragedies, though 
written in blank verse, yet belong to the heroic genre, and their 
chief interest lies in the fact that they represent that genre in 
its dying throes. In Mrs. Pix’s tragedies the heroic play of 


1 See p. 386. 2 See p. 388. 
3 Genest, Some Account of the English Stage, vol. 11, p. 104. 
4 See pp. 104-09. 


IN ENGLAND FROM 1650 TO 1760 138 


Dryden’s day could look upon its enfeebled and distorted 
image. We have the war background, the remoteness of time 
and place, the historical source with free alterations of per- 
sons and events, that mark the heroic drama. The type char- 
acters are the same. The heroine is unapproachable in beauty, 
unassailable in virtue. The hero, godlike in personal prowess, 
the idol of the army, framed by nature to be the darling joy of 
womankind, cares for glory only that he may lay it at the feet 
of his beloved. Blest by her he will leave unenvied mon- 
archs to “fight for this Dunghil Earth.” This noble pair, 
joined by indissoluble vows or by a secret marriage, are sub- 
jected by the plot to the machinations of the beautiful wicked 
woman in whose heart has sprung into being a passion for the 
hero, and to the arrogant demands of the tyrant who claims 
the heroine as his prey. The result is disaster and the last act 
is a holocaust. Fights, murders, and suicides carry off all the 
important dramatis persone. Disguises, mistaken identity, the 
ravings of sudden madness, ghosts, and secret documents, deter- 
mine the events of the play. Passion is torn into exclamatory 
tatters from the first scene to the last. We have rant and bluster 
and tortured similes, until taste, good sense, and correct Eng- 
lish suffer the same fate as the chief characters. The descrip- 
tion of Mrs. Pix as “a fat female author,” appropriately called 
““Mrs. Wellfed,” would prepare us for something more placid 
than the chaos into which she leads us. 

The one possible explanation of Mrs. Pix’s acceptance 
year after year by the audiences of Drury Lane and Lincoln’s 
Inn Fields is that the business of her plays never lags. They are 
short, full of action and surprising turns. An event is never 
delayed by a disquisition. They also gave excellent opportun- 
ity for scenic effects of palaces, prisons, and camps. 


The only woman writer of plays of real importance in this 
period is Susanna Centlivre.! She was the daughter of a Mr. 


1 Mrs. Inchbald: The British Theatre, vol. x1; Cibber: Lives of the Poets, vol. 
Iv, pp. 58-61. 


134 THE LEARNED LADY 
Freeman of Holbeach, Lincolnshire. He is said to have had 


a a considerable estate at the time of the Resto- 
iC etins ration, but being a zealous dissenter, he was 
(1680?-1723) persecuted, his estates were confiscated, and 


he was obliged to seek refuge in Ireland, where Susanna was 
born. Her early life-is involved in obscurity, but there cling to 
her name biographical details of a picturesque and romantic 
sort, though of rather questionable authenticity. Left an 
orphan at nine and subjected to the ill-usage of a stepmother, 
the child, at twelve, finally escapes and makes her way to 
London which she enters penniless, innocent, beautiful. She 
is rescued by a Cambridge student, a Mr. Hammond, and 
disguised as a boy she accompanies him to the University. 
Later she marries the nephew of Stephen Fox, but is left a 
widow before she is sixteen. A second marriage to a Mr. Car- 
roll results in a second widowhood before she is eighteen. At 
twenty her first tragedy is played at Drury Lane. She ap- 
pears soon after this as an actress in country theaters. Mrs. 
Behn and Mrs. Haywood could ask no richer material for an 
adventure novel. Then suddenly the scene changes. The buf- 
feted Susanna marries Mr. Centlivre, Queen Anne’s chief 
pastry-cook, and settles down into a comfortable, orderly, and 
apparently happy domestic life, of which, however, we know 
in reality even less than of her early kaleidoscopic career.! 
The events of her life are the presentation and publication of 
her plays. 

Before her marriage in 1706 she had begun the series of com- 
edies of which, between 1703 and 1722, she wrote seventeen. 
They were all successful, and four of them, The Gamester 
(1705), The Busy Body (1709), The Wonder: A Woman Keeps 
a Secret (1714), and A Bold Stroke for a Wife (1718), held a 
fairly prominent place on the stage through the century. 

In 1761 there was published a fine edition of her works in 
three volumes. There is a preliminary address “To the 
World” in which an anonymous woman endeavors to do jus- 

1 Centlivre, Susanna: Works. “To the World.” 


IN ENGLAND FROM 1650 TO 1760 135 


tice to “The Manes of the never to be forgotten Mrs. Cent- 
livre.” She thus recounts the difficulties Mrs. Centlivre en- 
countered as a female author: 


She was even ashamed to proclaim her own great Genius, probably 
because the Custom of the Times discountenanced poetical Excellence 
in a Female. The Gentlemen of the Quill published it not, perhaps 
envying her superior Talents; and her Bookseller, complying with na- 
tional Prejudices, put a fictitious Name to her Love’s Contrivance, 
thro’ Fear that the Work shou’d be condemned if known to be Femi- 
nine. With modest Diffidence she sent her Performances, like Orphans, 
into the World, without so much as a Nobleman to protect them; but 
they did not need to be supported by Interest, they were admired as 
soon as known, their real Standard, Merit, brought crowding Specta- 
tors to the playhouses, and the female Author, tho’ unknown, heard 
Applauses, such as have since been heaped on that great Author and 
Actor Colley Cibber. 

Her play of the Busy Body, when known to be the Work of a Woman 
searce defray’d the Expences of the First Night. The thin audience 
were pleased, and caused a full House the Second; the Third was 
crowded, and so on to the Thirteenth, when it was stopt, on account 
of the advanced Season; but the following Winter it appear’d again 
with Applause, and for Six Nights successively, was acted by rival 
Players, both at Drury Lane and at the Hay-Market Houses. See here 
the Effects of Prejudice, a Woman who did Honour to the Nation, 
suffer’d because she was a Woman. Are these things fit and becoming 
a free-born People, who call themselves polite and civilized! Hold! 
let my Pen stop, and not reproach the present Age for the Sins of 
their Fathers. ... 

A Poet is born so, not made by Rules; and is there not an equal 
Chance that the Poetical Birth should be female as well as male? ... 
I could wish that some young Ladies of my Acquaintance, now in 
Boarding Schools, had classical Education, which would improve 
their Minds, furnish them with a more general Knowledge, and of 
course better fit them for Conversation, and the Management of 
Business. 


The author of “‘To the World” finds great satisfaction in 
the union of Mrs. Lennox with “Lord Corke and Mr. Samuel 
Johnson” in the translation of Brumoy’s Greek Theatre. 


This convinces me [she says] that not only that barbarous Custom 
of denying Women to have Souls, begins to be rejected as foolish 


136 THE LEARNED LADY 


and absurd, but also that foolish Assertion, that Female Minds are not 
capable of producing literary Works, equal even to those of Pope, now 
loses Ground, .and probably the next Age may be taught by our pens 
that our Geniuses have been hitherto cramped and smothered, but not 
extinguished, and that the Sovereignty which the male Part of the 
Creation have, until now usurped over us, is unreasonably arbitrary: 
And, further, that our natural Abilities entitle us to a larger Share, not 
only in Literary Decisions, but that, with the present Directors, we 
are equally entitled to Power both in Church and State... .” 


In 1764 Baker, in Biographia Dramatica, gave an account 
of Mrs. Centlivre’s work, and most eighteenth-century dra- 
matic collections included plays by her. In 1776 The New Eng- 
lish Theatre, which professed to assemble “the most Valuable 
Plays which have been Acted on the London Stage,” pub- 
lished The Busy Body, A Bold Stroke for a Wife, and The Won- 
der. Her plays were included by John Bell in various collec- 
tions from 1776 to 1792. Mrs. Inchbald, in her British Theatre 
(1808), and Oxberry, in The New English Drama, 1818-1824, 
carried the publication of her plays into the nineteenth cen- 
tury. Such brief notices as occur are highly laudatory. Mr. 
Baker says: “In a word we cannot help giving it as our 
opinion, that if we do not allow her to be the very first ef our 
female writers for the stage, she has but one above her, and 
may justly be placed next to her predecessor in dramatic 
glory, the great Mrs. Behn.” Nearly half a century later Mrs. 
Inchbald gave even stronger praise when she said that Mrs. 
Centlivre “ranks in the first class of our comic dramatists.” 
Of the Busy Body Mrs. Inchbald said: “This comedy is by far 
her best work. In excellence of fable, strength of character, and 
intricacy of occurrences, it forms one of the most entertaining 
exhibitions the theatre can boast.” Of The Wonder she 
wrote: “Garrick thought Don Felix worthy his most powerful 
exertions, in describing the passion of jealousy; and his char- 
acter was upon the lists with the favorite parts he performed. 
... Mrs. Centlivre has somewhere said ‘the Muses, like 
most females, are least liberal to their own sex.’ She was un- 
grateful if she did not acknowledge her obligation to them in 


IN ENGLAND FROM 1650 TO 1760 137 


the composition of this work; for they presided with no nig- 
gardly influence over the whole production.” 

Modern study of Mrs. Centlivre’s work has taken a sur- 
prising turn. It has to do entirely with Quellen and Verhdilt- 
nisse. In 1900-1905 there were seven German dissertations 
dealing with the sources of her plays.! 

The impulse to play-writing seems to have expended it- 
self with Mrs. Centlivre. Hannah Cowley’s popular Belle’s 
Siratagem (1782) is the only other play of even moderate im- 
portance through the rest of the century. The situation with 
regard to play-writing is rather curious. Virtuous ladies were 
at liberty to write tragedies because tragedies were supposed 
to be moral and elevating. But unfortunately none of these 
ladies succeeded in tragedy. On the other hand, ladies who 
were not virtuous wrote comedies and were eminently suc- 
cessful. The realm between tragedy and comedy, the sen- 
timental comedy, in its combination of didacticism and 
morality with social studies from middle-class life and the op- 
portunity for rapid intrigue, might have seemed the very 
medium in which women could most advantageously work. 
But the successful sentimental comedies from The Conscious 
Lovers to False Delicacy were written by men playwrights. 


GENERAL LEARNING AND LITERARY WorK 


Besides the women whose work was sufficiently specialized 
to be grouped under particular subjects or species there 


1 Hobohm: Das Verhdltniss von Sus. Centlivre’s “ Love at a Venture” zu Thomas 
Corneille’s ‘“‘Le Gallant Double.” (Hall. Diss. 1900.) Wiillenweber: Mrs. 
Centlivre’s Lustspiel “Love's Contrivance” und seine Quellen. (Hall. Diss. 
1900.) Strube: Sus. Centlivre’s Lustspiel “The Stolen Heiress” und sein Ver- 
hdliniss zu “ The Heir” von Thomas May. (Hall. Diss. 1900.) Grober: Das Ver- 
hdltniss von Sus. Centlivre’s Lustspiel “‘The Gamester” zu Regnard’s Lustspiel 
“Te Joneur.” (Hall. Diss. 1900.) Weidler: Das Verhdltniss von Mrs. Centlivre’s 
“The Busy Body” zu Moliére’s “‘ I’ Etourdi” und Ben Jonson’s “The Divill is an 
Ass.” (Hall. Diss. 1900.) Obhnsorg: John Lacy’s ‘Dumb Lady,” Mrs. Cent- 
livre’s “‘Love’s Contrivance” und Henry Fielding’s “Mock Doctor” in ihrem 
Verhdltniss zu einander und zu threr gemeinshaftlichen Quelle. (Rostock. Diss. 
1900.) Poelchau: Susannah Centlivre’s Tragidie ‘The Cruel Gift” in ihrem 
Verhdliniss zur Quelle Boccaccio’s Decameron IV. (Hall. Diss. 1905.) 


138 THE LEARNED LADY 


were many women to whom learning was itself an avocation 
with no thought of any literary outcome, and there were many 
more whose interests were in the general field of belles-letires 
and who wrote either in verse or in prose, and on such varied 
themes as the occasion might suggest. Since no effective prin- 
ciple of classification suggests itself in connection with these 
writers, it will probably be in the interests of clearness to dis- 
cuss them in an order as nearly chronological as may be. 


An early, almost unknown, little volume of poems, published 
Joan Philips + in 1679 under the title, Female Poems on Sev- 
5x67) eral Occasions. Written by Ephelia, is the work 
of Joan Philips whose portrait accompanies the poems. Such of 
Miss Philips’s poems as can be dated belong but a year or two 
before the publication of the book. She apparently had some 
rather close connection with court circles. Her little volume is 
dedicated to the ‘‘Most Excellent Princess Mary, Dutchess of 
Richmond and Lennox”’; she sends a congratulatory poem to 
Charles II on the discovery of the Popish Plot; and she writes 
an elegy on Archbishop Sheldon. 

Her poems are not, however, usually concerned with court 
and state. The “‘Several Occasions” calling forth her verse are 
chiefly amatory or friendly. Her love-poems are highly per- 
sonal. From poem to poem the lady pursues the uneven and 
finally disastrous course of her love for ‘“‘Strephon,” sometimes 
less poetically addressed as “F. G.” From “Love’s First 
Approach” to Strephon’s final decisive nuptials with a wealth- 
ier Fair One the hopes and despairs of Ephelia are spread before 
us. She can find no surcease from sorrow. Books fail her as a 
resource, and her pen proves as recalcitrant as that of the White 
King in Looking Glass Land. 

Sometimes with Books I would divert my mind, 
But nothing there but F’s and G’s I find. 


Sometimes to ease my Grief, my Pen I take 
But it no letters but F. G. will make. 


Miss Philips’s friendship poems, in their addresses to “the 


IN ENGLAND FROM 1650 TO 1760 139 


honoured Eugenia,” “the beauteous Marinda,” to “Damon,” 
and to “‘Phylocles inviting him to friendship” show how defi- 
nitely Ephelia formed herself on the model of the great Orinda 
whom she praises as having reached the summit of excellence. 

Miss Philips also wrote in awe-struck admiration of “Madam 
Behn” whose “strenuous polite lines” seemed to her a union of 
“Strong and Sweet” such as might be envied by the wittiest 
men. And she followed in the footsteps of Mrs. Behn to the 
extent of writing one comedy, The Pair-Royal of Coxcombs 
which had the humble success of being acted at a dancing- 
school. The deprecatory Prologue and Epilogue were included 
in her poems together with some of the love-songs in the play. 

Ephelia seems to spread her life before us, but as a personage 
in the real world she escapes us. She and Strephon have faded 
into obscurity. She is contemporary in comedy with Mrs. 
Behn. Had they some literary comradeship? But twelve years 
separate the published work of Joan Philips from that of Mrs. 
Katherine Philips. Were the two poetesses perhaps related? 
Lady Winchilsea was eighteen when the volume by Ephelia 
appeared. About fifteen years later we find Lady Winchilsea 
as “‘Ardealia” writing on Friendship to one “Ephelia.” Could 
it possibly be this Ephelia? Did Ephelia publish the poems 
herself with her own portrait as frontispiece? If so she was 
strangely lacking in the reserve characteristic of Orinda and 
Ardelia. But even with no biographical data whereby to sub- 
stantiate or correct the poems, the thin little volume holds its 
place of interest because of its early date and because of the 
literary ambitions it indicates. 


Anne Killigrew came of a family prominent in the court of 
Charles II. Her uncle Thomas, the “court Anne Kitligrew 
wit,”’ was given a patent for the Theater Royal; (1660-2685) 
her uncle Henry was admiral under James, Duke of York; 
her father was chaplain to James and Master of the Savoy; and 
Anne was maid of honor to Mary of Modena. She was born 
in St. Martin’s Lane and died at her father’s lodgings within 


140 THE LEARNED LADY 


the Cloisters of Westminster. London and the court were 
her habitat. Ballard says she had “a polite education,” but 
no details are given. She apparently was taught the accom- 
plishments counted necessary for a girl in her social position. 
That she went beyond mediocrity in painting we have al- 
ready. seen.! In poetry, also, according to Dryden, she ex- 
celled. The thin volume of her published verse (1686) scarcely 
justifies his eulogy, but Wood, in Athene Oxoniensis, says that 
Dryden in no way exceeds the truth. Her poems sent anony- 
mously from hand to hand received high praise and were even 
at first-attributed to the best poets of the age. They gradually 
came to be known as hers, but she gives no evidence of having 
suffered any contumely as a poetess. She has nowhere any 
complaint of undue or irritating feminine limitations. She is 
pessimistic, scornful, rather hard and drastic, in her judgments, 
but it is greed for gold, ambition for place or power, unbridled 
love, atheism, war, that are the subjects of her invective. There 
is not a light or playful, or even a happy, touch in her poems. 
They have a crude virility, what Dryden calls a “noble vig- 
our,” and a. contemptuous outlook on “the truly wretched 
Human Race.” 

Personally Miss Killigrew must have been attractive. Her 
epitaph eulogizes her as a daughter and a sister: 


In a numerous race 

And vertuous, the highest place 
None envy’d her: sisters, brothers, 
Her admirers were and lovers: 
She was to all s’ obliging sweet, 
All in one love to her did meet. 


And she was an acknowledged favorite at court, especially 
with her royal master and mistress. Dryden emphasizes her 
beauty and charm. The portrait she painted of herself shows 
her in no sense averse to pomps and vanities of attire.? In actual 
life she must: have moved along in fairly smooth accord with 


1 See p. 85, 86. 
2 See mezzotint engraving by Becket in 1686 edition of her poems. 


IN ENGLAND FROM 1650 TO 1760 141 


the life about her, but there could have been few ladies within 
the circle of the court more alien to it in spirit than Anne Killi- 
grew. It is difficult to place her mentally amid the gayeties of 
London life. She presents an anomaly. To be young, beau- 
tiful, gifted, high in social opportunities, praised and loved, 
and yet to look out upon life with bitterness and distaste, to be 
conscious at twenty-five that all this world has to offer will 
turn to dust and ashes in the mouth — such is the curious com- 
bination we find in her. While the few accessible details con- 
cerning her indicate a considerable degree of lovableness, her 
poems are those of an implacable moral censor. 

Anne Killigrew was but four when Mrs. Philips died, but 
the spell of the “Matchless Orinda” descended early upon 
her, and she gives one of the earliest of the many eulogies writ- 
ten by women concerning their distinguished ancestor among 
British Muses. 


Orinda (Albion, and her sex’s grace) 

Gw’d not her glory to a beauteous face: 

Tt was her radiant soul that shone within, 
Which struck a lustre thro’ her outward skin; 
That did her lips and cheeks with roses dye, 
Advane’d her heighth, and sparkled in her eye. 
Nor did her sex at all obstruct her fame. 

But high’r ’mongst the stars it fixt her name; 
What she did write, not only all allow’d, 

But ev’ry laurel, to her laurel bow’d! 


John Evelyn’s flattering letter to the Duchess of Newcastle, 
already quoted, with its list of learned women, Mrs. Evelyn 
his suggestion to Lord Cornbury that he add eee 
two ladies to his gallery of notables, the trou- (665-85) 
ble he took to conduct a party of ladies to see the girls’ “col- 
leges” at Hackney, and various references in Numismata 
(1697) indicate a genuine interest in the intellectual achieve- 
ments of women. Mrs. Evelyn seems at first to have been of 
a different temper. She wrote as follows to her son’s tutor, 
Mr. Bohun, in 1672: 


142 THE LEARNED LADY 


Women were not borne to reade authors, and censure the learned, to 
compare lives and judge of virtues, to give rules of morality, and 
sacrifice to the Muses. We are willing to acknowledge all time bor- 
rowed from family duties misspent; the care of children’s education, 
observing a husband’s commands, assisting the sick, relieving the 
poore, and being serviceable to our friends, are of sufficient weight to 
employ the most improved capacities amongst us. If sometimes it 
happens by accident that one of a thousand aspires a little higher, her 
fate commonly exposes her to wonder, but adds little to esteeme. The 
distaffe will defend our quarrels as well as the sword, and the needle 
is as instructive as the penne. A heroine is a kind of prodigy: the in- 
fluence of a blazing starre is not more dangerous, or more avoyded. 
Though I have lived under the roofe of the learned, and in the neigh- 
borhood of science, it has had no other effect on a temper like mine, 
but that of admiration. 


But these very letters, in which Mrs. Evelyn disclaims 
learning, would be a capital point in refutation of Macaulay’s 
charge of general feminine illiteracy. In subject-matter, in 
style, and in the mechanics of writing they show a develop- 
ment not unworthy of that “roofe of the learned” under which 
she dwelt. At the time Mrs. Evelyn wrote the letter just 
quoted her daughter Mary was but six years old, but her lit- 
erary and artistic tastes must have soon become manifest, 
for when she died of small-pox at nimeteen she was an ac- 
complished young woman, on the road, apparently, to be the 
dangerous “blazing starre” her mother decried, and her 
training must have been going on for ten or twelve years in 
the home with the active connivance of her parents. Her father 
was exceedingly proud, not only of her excellence in dancing 
and music, but especially, it would seem, of her passion for 
books. She had, he said, “read abundance of history, and all 
the best poets, even Terence, Plautus, Homer, Virgil, Horace, 
Ovid; all the best romances and modern poems.”’ After her 
death they found among her papers a commonplace book in 
which she had entered “an incredible number of selections 
from historians, poets, travellers.’ Her piety and her impulse 
towards expression were both shown in the many “resolu- | 
tions, contemplations, prayers and devotions” she left in writ- 


IN ENGLAND FROM 1650 TO 1760 143 


ten form. Of the extent to which both Mrs. Evelyn and her 
daughter carried their work in painting and enamel I have 
already spoken.! 

» The Evelyn household may stand doubtless as one of many 
where, without any tinge of pedantry or any especial outward 
manifestations of learning, there was yet a natural interest in 
arts and letters, an interest shared, in quite a simple, normal 
way by all the members of the family. 


The Honorable Miss Dudleya North was a niece of the Honor- 
able Roger North, and it is through the memo- The Honorable 
rable Livesof the Norths that wecome upon anac- Weg 
count of her life. Dudleya and her two younger (1675-1712) 
brothers were brought up together. She learned the same les- 
sons and read the same books as her brothers, and joined in 
their amusements. When they went to the University, she 
carried on her studies at home and she became one of the 
most highly cultured and learned women of her time. After 
she had conquered Greek and Latin she advanced to Hebrew, 
and finally, “by a long and severe course of study,” she gained 
“a competent knowledge in the whole circle of Oriental learn- 
ing.” Her uncle Roger laconically described her life as fol- 
lows: “The eldest sister, Catharine, died . . . and the young- 
est, named Dudleya, having emaciated herself with study 
whereby she had made familiar to her, not only Greek and 
Latin, but the Oriental languages, under the infliction of a 
sedentery distemper, died also.” 

The fine collection of Oriental books left by Miss North 
was given by her brother, Lord North and Grey, to the pa- 
rochial library at Rougham in Norfolk. Her uncle wrote: 
“T have had a design to build a parochial library at Rougham, 
and now shall finish it this summer, and placing my niece’s 
books there, entitle the Catalogue Ex dono, etc., e libris erudi- 
tissime virginis, etc., which will be a monument more lasting 
than marble.” ? 


1 See pp. 85-86. 
2 The Lives of the Norths, vol. 1, p. 7; vol. mm, pp. 262, 295. 


144 THE LEARNED LADY 


Anne Lee, the daughter and co-heiress of Sir Henry Lee, 
Bie Lee, married in 1673 Thomas Wharton, whose chief 
Lady Wharton — interest in her was based on the large dowry she 
Beats) brought him. The unhappiness of her married 
life received some alleviation from the wise and steadfast friend- 
ship of Dr. Gilbert Burnet. In 1680-81, she was in France for 
her health and during this time she corresponded regularly with 
Dr. Burnet. He addressed to her various poems with titles such 
as The Secrets of Friendship, Friendship’s Mysteries, Pure Love, 
and Love’s Magnetism. She wrote a tragedy in blank verse on 
the love of Ovid for Julia, a number of Scripture paraphrases, 
and some occasional poems.! Some of these poems drew ap- 
proving verses from Dryden in his Eleonora, a panegyrical 
poem on the death of Mrs. Wharton’s elder sister, Lady Ab- 
ingdon, in 1691, and from Waller, who, in his old age, was still 
equal to flattering a new “Chloris,” under which name he cele- 
brated her learning and her poetry. 


Ann Baynard had a natural propensity to learning and her 
Ann Baynard father Dr. Edward Baynard, Fellow of the Col- 
(1672-1697) lege of Physicians, London, gave her a very 
liberal education. Dr. Prude? says of her: 


As for learning, whether it be to know and understand natural causes 
and events, to know the courses of the sun, moon, and stars; the quali- 
ties of herbs and plants; to be acquainted with the demonstrable veri- 
ties of the mathematicks; the study of philosophy; the writings of the 
antients; and that in their own proper language, without the help of 
an interpreter: These and the like are the most noble accomplishments 
of the human mind, and accordingly do bring great delight and satis- 


1 Verses by that ‘Excellent Poetess, Mrs. Wharton,” with other poems 
to her, were published with “‘The Idea of Christian Love,” by Mr. Edward 
Young of Salisbury. Term Catalogues. (Mich. 1688.) : 

2 A Sermon at the Funeral of the late learned and ingenuous Mrs. Ann Baynard, 
Daughter and only Child of Dr. Edward Baynard, Fellow of the College of Phy- 
sitians, Together with some remarkable passages of her life, preached at the Parish 
Church of Barn(e)s in Surrey, June 6, 1697. By John Prude, A.M., Chaplain 
to his Grace the Duke of Norfolk; and Curate of St. Clement's Danes. Term Cat- 
alogues. (Trin. 1697.) 


IN ENGLAND FROM 1650 TO 1760 145 


faction along with them, these things she was not only conversant in, 
but mistress of, and that to such a degree, that very few of her sex 
did ever arrive at. She had from her infancy been trained up in the 
knowledge of these things, and had made a great progress therein; 
and even in her green years, at the age of 23, was arrived to the knowl- 
edge of a bearded philosopher.! 


She was a “nervous and subtle disputant”’ in the “hard and 
knotty arguments of metaphysical learning.”” She was always 
coveting more knowledge, saying that it was a sin to be con- 
tented with but a little. She was exceedingly religious and 
learning was to her but a handmaid of piety. Her last words 
were a recommendation to women to study philosophy and 
the great book of nature which would give them a sound basis 
for wisdom in practical life. Women, she said, are capable of 
such study, and could accomplish much if they would “spend 
of that time in study and thinking, which they do in visits, 
vanity and folly.” Mr. Collier, in the Great Historical Dic- 
tionary, says of her that it is doubtful whether the first Ralph 
Baynard, who for his conduct at the battle of Hastings was 
rewarded with eighty-five lordships, did more honor to the 
name of Baynard or the last Anne. 


Academia : or the Humours of the University of Oxford in bur- 
lesque verse is a thin quarto by Mrs. Alicia yee aticia 
D’Anvers. It was printed in May, 1691, and D’Anvers 
again with a fuller descriptive title in June of “- 169") 
the same year. The poem is an account given to his fellow- 
servants by John who has recently visited Oxford. Mrs. 
d’Anvers puts herself in John’s place. She uses his crude and 
even rough language, she gives his point of view, and relishes 
the misconceptions due to his ignorance. Heavy and clumsy 
as the poem is there is something refreshing and original in its 
tone. As an attempted realistic portrayal of a servant’s experi- 
ences it stands quite by itself, except in comedies, in the decades 
before the novel widened human interests. Mrs. D’Anvers is 


1 Biog. Fem., p. 42. 


146 THE LEARNED LADY 


neither patronizing nor didactic. She simply finds genuine 
humor and entertainment in the comic juxtaposition of John’s 
mind and the ancient customs and glories of Oxford. 


Lady Chudleigh ! was a lady of much repute in the eight- 
Lady Chudleigh  eenth century for her writings in both prose and 
(1656-1710) verse. Her Poems were published in 1703 and 
her Essays in 1710, but her chief literary activities belong in 
the late seventeenth century. Her Essays are disquisitions on 
Pride, Humility, Self-love, Friendship, Death, Anger, Ava- 
rice, Solitude, and kindred themes. Mr. Ballard says of them: 
“They appear to be, not the excursions of a lively imagina- 
tion ...so much as the deliberate results of a long exercise 
in the world, improv’d with reading, regulated with judg- 
ment; softened by good breeding, and heightened with sprightly 
thoughts and elevated piety.” Her prose style is fluent, ener- 
getic, and, for the most part, correct. In her Preface to her 
Song of Three Children Paraphrased she makes several points 
that indicate mental independence. In the height of the 
dominance of the heroic couplet she chooses Pindarie verse 
because she does not wish to be tied up to the rules of the 
couplet, and because she desires to give her fancy greater scope. 
She begs pardon for introducing into her poem ideas “not 
generally received,” such as Dr. Burnet’s conception of the 
** Ante-diluvian Earth as Smooth, regular, and uniform; with- 
out Mountains or Hills.” Concerning her poetic use of the doc- 
trine of preéxistence she says, “To me ’t is indifferent which 
is true, as long as I know I am by the Laws of Poetry allow’d 
the Liberty of chusing that which will sound most gracefully 
in Verse.”” In regard to the stars she adopts “the Cartesian 
Hypothesis”” because it makes the universe “appear in- 
finitely larger, fuller, more magnificent.” Her imagination 
is as genuinely excited as was Tennyson’s by her conception of 
the ‘‘boundless Spaces”’ of the heavens and the splendor of the 
“huge Globes which roll over our Heads.” She believes also 

1 Cibber: Lives of the Poets, vol. 111, pp. 177-86. 


IN ENGLAND FROM 1650 TO 1760 147 


in a millennial existence on “a new habitable earth.” The 
poem itself is an unbroken ecstasy ninety long stanzas in du- 
ration, and becomes undeniably wearisome. But the woman 
who could spend months in a lonely country place absorbed 
in such religious and scientific reflections, who could maintain 
for so long a time so rapt and energetic a mental attitude 
towards abstract subjects, was far enough removed from the 
traditional hausfrau. 

Though Lady Chudleigh rejoices in these learned topics 
she modestly disclaims any accurate knowledge. “But ’t is 
not reasonable to expect that a Woman should be nicely 
skill’d in Physics: We are kept Strangers to all ingenious and 
useful Studies, and can have but a slight and superficial Knowl- 
edge of things.” Two poems, Resolution and To Mr. Dryden 
on his excellent Translation of Virgil, give evidence of Lady 
Chudleigh’s wide reading in poetry, history, drama, and 
divinity. Her literary dicta are of little value, for they do 
hardly more than echo the judgments of the day. According 
to her it was the poet Waller who, coming after the “transient 
Glimm’rings of Chaucer” and the “Lunar Beams of Spenser,” 
announced the dawn of a new Morn, and with Dryden came 
“The Triumphs of refulgent Day.” Taken as a whole the 
poems bitterly inveigh against life with its blighting sorrows, 
its fleeting, unreal joys, its mjustice, its black despairs. The 
only break in the gloom comes in short periods of absorption 
in books, or in occasional religious ecstasies. 

The first poem by which Lady Chudleigh became known is 
The Ladies’ Defence: a sudden, angry outburst caused by a 
sermon on Conjugal Duty by a Mr. Sprint, a nonconformist 
in Sherbourn, Dorsetshire.! The personal animus in a little 


1 Mr. Sprint’s sermon was printed under the title The Bride-Woman’s Coun- 
sellor. Being a Sermon Preach’d at a Wedding, May the Eleventh, 1699 at 
Sherbourne in Dorsetshire. It was from 1 Cor. vu, 34, “But she that is Married 
eareth for the things of the World, how she may please her Husband.” He 
explains that “Man was all Affibility and Sweetness of Temper”’ before the 
Fall, the chief responsibility for which was properly placed on Eve and her 
female descendants. God had also fully indicated her function when he 


148 THE LEARNED LADY 


poem To the Ladies warning them against marriage, apparently 
grew out of her own matrimonial infelicities. And The Ladies’ 
Defence has the same ring of indignant sincerity. The poem is 
in the form of a conversation between the parson who preached 
the sermon; Sir William Loveall, who, out of the ignorance of his 
unmarried state, endeavors to reconcile the warring parties; 
Marissa, Lady Chudleigh herself; and Sir John Brute, who 
thanks the parson for preaching against “those Terrors of our 
Lives, those worst of Plagues, those Furies call’d our Wives.” 
The parson replies: 


Not led by Passion, but by Zeal inspir’d, 

I’ve told the Women what’s of them requir’d: 
Taught them their Husbands to Obey and Please, 
And to their Humours sacrifice their Ease: 
Give up their Reason, and their Wills resign, 
And ev’ry look, and ev’ry thought confine. 
Sure, this Detraction you can’t justly call? 

°T is kindly meant, and ’t is address’d to All. 
If you wou’d live as it becomes a Wife, 

And raise the Honour of a marry’d Life, 

You must the useful Art of wheedling try, 
And with his various Humours still comply; 


Whate’er. he is, you still must think him best, 
And boast to all that you are truly blest; 
Also, to him you inward Reverence owe; 

If he’s a Fool, you must not think him so; 


deliberately created her for the Profit and Comfort of Man. “A good wife,” 
continues Mr. Sprint, “should be like a Mirrour which hath no Image of its 
own, but receives its Stamp and Image from the Face that looks into it: So 
should a good Wife endeavour to frame her outward Deportment, and her in- 
ward Affections according to her Husband’s.” She must not only obey his com- 
mands but she must bring “under unto him the very Desires of the Heart to be 
regulated by him so far, that it should not be lawful for her to will or desire 
what she herself liked, but only what her husband should approve and allow.” 
Mr. Sprint printed his sermon only because of attacks by some “‘ill-natur’d 
Females.”” He gets his revenge by saying that he has not met among all his 
accusers one woman “whose Husband is able to give her the Character of a 
dutiful and obedient Wife.” 


IN ENGLAND FROM 1650 TO 1760 149 


Nor yet indulge one mean contemptuous Thought, 
Or fancy he can e’er commit a Fault. 

Nor must your Deference be alone confin’d 

Unto the hid Recesses of your Mind, 

But must im all your Actions be display’d, 

And visible to each Spectator made.! 


After this sarcastic summary of Mr. Sprint’s irritating sermon 
Lady Chudleigh in the person of Marissa, depicts the general 
condition of women and her own loftier ambitions: 


”T is hard we should be by the Men despis’d 

Yet kept from knowing what would make us priz’d. 
Debarr’d from Knowledge, banish’d from the Schools, 
And with the utmost Industry bred Fools. 

Laugh’d out of Reason, jested out of Sense, 

And nothing left but Native Innocence: 


Or that my Sex would all ane Toys despise; 
And only study to be Good, and Wise: 
Instead of Novels, Histories peruse, 

And for their Guides the wise Ancients chuse, 
Thro’ all the Labyrinths of Learning go, 

And grow more humble as they more do know. 
Beauty’s a Trifle merits not my Care. 

I’d rather Csop’s ugly Visage wear, 

Joyn’d with his Mind, than be a Fool, and Fair. 


1 Lady Chudleigh’s summary of the arts of a successful wife is exemplified in 
a serious book published anonymously entitled The Fair Counsellor, or, The 
Young Lady’s Conduct after Marriage. Charlotte is instructing Olivia in “The 
Art of Management.” A woman must recognize that she is confined to her 
husband for life and hence she should make it her business to please. She 
should learn to reflect his moods as in a glass. To all wayward humors she 
should oppose passive obedience and non-resistance. If he should come home 
intoxicated she should “by all the little innocent Arts of Love and fond En- 
dearments decoy him to his Bed.” An illustrative example of what may be 
done by gentleness and submission is the experience of Sir Toby Testy and 
his wife. Sir Toby became so warm with anger one day as to cane my Lady. 
She retired in tears to her own room, explaining to him later that it seemed 
better to her to bemoan her fate in silence than to expose his unkindness to a 
censorious world. The outcome was that he clasped her in his arms with a 
thousand endearing protestations, and never disobliged her again to his dying 
day. 7 


150 THE LEARNED LADY 


But spite of you, we’ll to ourselves be kind: 
Your censures slight, your little Tricks despise, 
And make it our whole business to be wise. 

The mean low trivial Cares of Life disdain, 

And read and Think, and Think and read again, 
And on our Minds bestow the utmost Pain. 


One of the important women of letters in the late seventeenth 
Anne Kingsmill, Century was Anne Kingsmill.’ Of her early life 
Lady Winchilsea we have no definite details. That it was a gay 
Caer) and happy life may be inferred from one of her 
retrospective poems in which she says that in her youth 

“Pleasure’s tempting Air’”’ blew soft about her, and that 
she dedicated her “Prime” to “vain Amusements.” Later 
she coveted a place at court which to her ambitious eye 
seemed “ Paradice below.” At what time this desire was real- 
ized we have no record, but in 1683 we find her listed as one of 
the maids of honor to Mary of Modena. Miss Strickland says 
that Anne Killigrew and Anne Kingsmill were “ladies of irre- 
proachable virtue, members of the Church of England, and 
alike distinguished for moral worth and literary achieve- 
ments,” and she adds that Anne Kingsmill was “well-known as 
the beautiful and witty maid of honour.” In 1684 Anne mar- 
ried Mr. Finch, gentleman of the bedchamber to the Duke of 
York. At the coming of William and Mary, Mr. and Mrs. 
Finch went to the family place at Eastwell Park where they 
spent the rest of their uneventful lives in a retirement, embit- 
tered at first, doubtless, by their grief over Stuart disasters, 
but, as the years passed, rendered more and more delightful by 
the joys of country life, of books, and of friends. Mrs. Finch’s 
best poems are those inspired by Eastwell and its associations. 
The Elizabethan house at Eastwell was set in a park of old yew 
trees and majestic beeches, forming “the very ideal of an an- 
cestral park of the ancient noblesse,”’ and it was by the extra- 
ordinary dignity and beauty of this park that Mrs. Finch’s most 
imaginative work was inspired. Within doors the gathering of 


1 Winchilsea, Lady: Poems (ed. Reynolds, Myra); “A Fragment.” 


IN ENGLAND FROM 1650 TO 1760 151 


antiquities, the illuminating of books, the formation of a great 
library, and free literary productivity were the family inter- 
ests. There were also many and close ties of friendship founded 
on natural causes of union such as loyalty to the Stuarts, de- 
votion to the Church of England, high and even austere ideals 
of life. And family ties and ties of friendship received ardent 
acknowledgment. No woman of this period was more happily 
circumstanced in her home for the unhampered pursuit of 
literary tastes than was Lady Winchilsea. She began to write 
when she was a maid of honor, but it was with a nervous sense 
of the ridicule that would probably follow any disclosure of that 
fact. But at Eastwell the case was different. There are charm- 
ing pictures of evening sessions when the authoress presented 
her work to an enthusiastic circle. A scribe entered her writings 
in a fair and clerkly hand in a majestic folio. With such en- 
couragement the lady kept sedulously and joyfully to her task. 
And when her husband’s accession to the title gave her a new 
position of dignity and authority she even ventured, in 1713, 


1 That Lady Winchilsea’s work was pretty well known before 1713 is evi- 
dent from an interesting passage in Mrs. Manley’s The New Aialantis (1709). 
Some invisible spectators are being taken about under the guidance of “‘Intel- 
ligence.”” They are observing the daily parade of coaches on the “Prado” 
when Intelligence calls attention to a lady in one of the coaches. “The Lady,” 
he says, “once belonged to the Court, but marrying into the Country, she 
made it ber Business to devote herself to the Muses, and has writ a great 
many pretty Things: These Verses of the Progress of Life, have met with abun- 
dance of applause, and therefore I recommend them to your Excellency’s 
Perusa].”” The Progress of Life is then quoted entire and Astrza comments: 
“The Lady speaks very feelingly: We need look no further than this, to know 
that she’s herself past that agreeable Age she so much regrets. However, 1 am 
very well pleas’d with the Thought that runs thro’; if she had contracted some- 
thing of the second and third stanza, it had not been the Worse. 1 presume 
she’s one of the Few that write out of Pleasure, and not Necessity. By that 
means its her own Fault, if she publish any Thing but what’s Good; for it’s 
next to impossible to write much and write well.” (Vol. 1, p. 186.) In the 
Key the “Lady” thus spoken of is said to be “Col. Finch’s Lady once a Maid 
of Honour.” Mrs. Manley’s version of The Progress of Life shows several slight 
verbal variations from the form published in 1713. Two limes on Parnassus in 
the second stanza appeared in 1713 as more orthodox lines on Canaan. But 
when Miss Seward’s mother taught her the poem in 1763, it was the old and 
not the 1713 version that she used. (Winchilsea, Lady: Works, ed. Reynolds, 
p. lsxiii.) 


152 THE LEARNED LADY 


to publish a selection from her verse, first under the pseudonym 
“Ardelia,” and then, in a later impression, with her full name 
and title. 

Lady Winchilsea’s poems were composed between 1683 and 
1720, and during this period she tried nearly all poetic forms. 
Songs, satires, fables, tragedies, translations, are fully repre- 
sented. She was the most voluminous of the minor poets of her 
time, and in vigor and scope she outranks most of them. But 
her literary importance to-day rests not so much on the amount 
or variety of her work, as on the fact that in an age of didacti- 
cism and satire she delicately foreshadowed tastes that ruled 
in the romanticism of a century later. It was her Nocturnal 
Reverie, with its minute accuracy of observation, its sense of the 
mystery of nature and of the mystic union between man and 
nature, that secured Wordsworth’s praise, gave her an honor- 
able place in Ward’s English Poets, and finally established her 
in the heaven of literary fame as, in Mr. Gosse’s phrase, 
“a minor excelsitude.” 

In the present study quite other points are to be made con- 
cerning Lady Winchilsea. She is particularly interesting when 
considered as a heretic against certain prevailing social and 
educational ideals. In the gay dissipations of court life under 
Charles II she maintained a conception of life serious and even 
austere. In close association with Mary of Modena and James 
II she yet maintained her devotion to the Church of England. 
With the world of fashion flocking to the comedies of the Res- 
toration dramatists she yet condemned the immoralities of the 
stage with the bitterness of a Jeremy Collier. There was, then, 
in Lady Winchilsea an independence of judgment, a stoutness 
of fiber in forming and defending her own views, which would 
lead one to expect some trenchant remarks on the contempo- 
rary attitude towards women. It is much to be regretted that 
the letters of Lady Winchilsea, if any are extant, have never 
been published. Her interests were so varied, her friendships 
so ardent, her hours of country leisure so numerous, her pen so 
facile, that she must have found, in what Anne Seward called 


IN ENGLAND FROM 1650 TO 1760 153 


“epistolary solicitudes,” one of the most convenient outlets 
for a spirit often kicking against the pricks of social conven- 
tions, and her keenness of insight, her caustic phrasing, would 
make her letters worth many pages of pindarics. But in default 
of such letters we turn to the one prose essay and to the poems. 
From scattered passages we can build up the elements of her 
heresies. Though she loved her home and was the most devoted 
of wives, she utterly rejected the hausfrau theory of life. She 
declared that she, at least, was never meant for “the dull 
manage of a servile house.” She asked little of her table except 
that it should be “set without her care.” Rich food and elabo- 
rate service could be dispensed with, but leisure and a free mind 
she must have. The frivolous occupations of the town lady, the 
endless discussions of laces and brocades, the rivalries as to 
dishes and screens from China, the gossip and ill-natured jests 
at fashionable tea-tables, she found unendurable. Feminine 
accomplishments, such as embroidery, amateurish drawing and 
painting, awakened her active hostility. 

This definite rejection of all that ordinarily filled the fem- 
inine mind, and a rejection, moreover, in the interests of books 
and writing, of course made Ardelia the unhappy victim of 
many a sneer. The attack on her by Pope and Gay, in Three 
Hours after Marriage, in 1717, may be taken as an extreme 
example of the indignities to which “a petticoat author” might 
be subjected, but there must have been many lesser evidences 
of social disapproval or the irritating theme would not so often 
recur in her poems. In “The Introduction” she says: 


Alas! a woman that attempts the pen, 

Such an intruder on the rights of men, 

Such a presumptuous Creature, is esteem’d, 
The fault, can by no vertue be redeem’d. 

They tell us, we mistake our sex and way; 
Good breeding, fassion, dancing, dressing, play 
Are the accomplishments we should desire; 

To write, or read, or think, or to enquire 
Would cloud our beauty, and exhaust our time, 
And interrupt the Conquests of our prime. 


154 THE LEARNED LADY 


She congratulates herself that she had at least had the good 
sense to keep her rhymes a secret while at court, where a 
“Versifying Maid of Honour” would have been looked upon 
“with prejudice, if not with contempt.” During a visit to 
London she heard the young gossip Almeria describe a certain 
lady as “A Poetess! a woman who writes! A common jest!” 
Conscious of her growing folio at Eastwell, Ardelia resented 
the implied censure. What law, she asks, forbids women to 
think? Women, she protests, are “ Education’s and not Na- 
ture’s fools.”’ Ardelia had high praise from noted contempo- 
raries and cordial appreciation at home. But these did not 
avail to conquer her morbid sensitiveness to criticism. She 
seemed to embody in herself two warring tendencies, a demand 
for complete intellectual freedom and the author’s inevitable 
desire to spread his wares abroad, with the shrinking modesty 
of the lady to whom any sort of publicity was hateful. 

The “ Matchless Orinda,”’ Lady Winchilsea tells us, was the 
model on whom, from her early girlhood she formed herself. 
The first verses she wrote were in honor of Orinda. By Orinda’s 
example she justified the efforts and aims of her own muse, but 
she is in no sense a copyist. It was Orinda’s fame as a noted 
and virtuous woman poet that inspired her rather than any 
close study of Orinda’s work. Lady Winchilsea, in that small 
portion of her work on which her fame rests, is very delicately 
and truly original. Her spirit reacted against court life as 
definitely as did Anne Killigrew’s, but she found no satisfac- 
tion in satiric comment. She shrank from any sort of contest. 
She argued and protested only when pushed to the wall. She 
was shy and easily intimidated, and her best work does not 
come from the heat of conflict or from bitterness of spirit. She 
is essentially contemplative. The poems on which her fame 
rests blossomed out quietly, exquisitely, under the gentle stim- 
ulus of a happy home life in the midst of lovely natural 
surroundings. She is typically a lady of letters because, 
without the spur of necessity, urged on by no popular ap- 
plause, she yet, for more than thirty years, made the reading 


IN ENGLAND FROM 1650 TO 1760 155 


of books and the writing of books the central occupation 
of her life. 


The honorable Mrs. Monck! was the daughter of Lord 
“Molesworth, a nobleman of Ireland. Mr. Bal- yy. Honorable 
lard says of her learning: “She, purely by Mrs. Monck 
force of her own natural genius, acquired a ids xr) 
perfect knowledge of the Latin, Italian and Spanish tongues: 
and by a constant reading of the finest authors in those 
languages, became so great a mistress of the art of poetry, 
that she wrote many poems for her own diversion.”’ In 1716, 
after her death, Lord Molesworth published her poems under 
the title Marinda. Poems and Translations on Several Occasions. 
In his dedication to Caroline, the Princess of Wales, he says 
that the book represents the works of the leisure hours of a 
young gentlewoman in a remote country solitude, with no 
assistance but that of a good library, and with the daily care of 
a large family on her hands. In commending her character he 
says, “I loved her more because she deserved it, than because she 
was mine.” Various slight poems show Marinda’s knowledge 
of Italian and Spanish. Better than all these are two cleverly 
turned epigrams on “a lady of pleasure,” and some affecting 
farewell lines written in her last sickness to her husband. Mrs. 
Monck’s repute for learning comes largely by hearsay, her 
printed memorials are slight and unimportant, but she never- 
theless gives an impression, elusive but real, of a most interest- 
ing personality. 


Lady Giffard was Sir William Temple’s sister. She was 
twelve years younger than Dorothy. After her Martha, 
marriage and almost immediate widowhood, in Lady Giffard 
1661, she made her home with the Temples. hae 
Her Life and Correspondence has been published by Mrs. Longe 
as a sequel to the Letters of Dorothy Osborne. The volume con- 
tains letters from Lady Chesterfield, from Lady Sunderland 

1 Cibber: Lives of the Poets, vol. 11, pp. 201-03. 


156 THE LEARNED LADY 


(“Saccharissa”’), and others, to Lady Giffard. The letters by 
Lady Giffard are few in number and are all written to her niece 
Lady Berkeiey, later Lady Portland, and belong in the years 
1697-1722. These letters have none of the sparkle and humor 
and literary charm of Dorothy’s. But we get indications that 
Lady Giffard was a woman of intellectual interests. We find 
her reading Turkish history daytimes with recourse to Virgil, 
“as less exacting,” for evenings. She knew Spanish and French, 
and one of the specific items in her will is a bequest of the books 
she had collected in these two languages. 


A third series of letters, published under the title Political 
Gash Bene and Social Letters of a Lady of the Eighteenth 
Mrs. Osborne Century, though belonging later in the century, 
(1693-175) may be brought in here because they carry on 
the series of Osborne letters. Sarah Byng, the daughter of 
Admiral Byng, Viscount Torrington, married, in 1710, John 
Osborne of Chicksands Priory, the old home of Dorothy and 
the place from which she wrote most of her letters. Mr. John 
Osborne was Dorothy’s grand-nephew. He died in 1719 and 
his father in 1720, leaving to Sarah Osborne an infant son, 
Danvers, the heir to the title and a heavily burdened estate. 
Her letters fall in several series, the first set from 1721 to 1739 
being to her brother George on business matters concerning the 
property. Most interesting are the letters to Danvers from 
1733 to 1751. When he came of age in 1736 she was able to 
turn over to him an unincumbered estate, and on his marriage 
in 1740 she superintended the establishment of the new house- 
hold at Chicksands. A third set of letters has to do with the 
sentence and execution of her brother Admiral Byng, in 1757. 
Through the death of the wife of Danvers in 1743 and the 
death of Danvers in 1750 Mrs. Osborné was left with two 
grandsons to bring up, and her last letters are to John, one 
of these grandsons, who was traveling in Holland. 

Through two generations Mrs. Osborne bore heavy admin- 
istrative and financial burdens. She was both father and mother 


IN ENGLAND FROM 1650 TO 1760 157 


to her son, and then to her grandsons. And she was left single- 
handed to conduct the defense of her brother Admiral Byng. 
It is not strange that the letters are frequently hurried and 
‘harassed in tone. She is constantly vexed and baffled because, 
as a woman, she cannot conduct affairs directly. Some man 
must be her intermediary. She lays plans, foresees difficulties, 
writes explicit directions, and then she must urge and cajole 
her representative to due interest and prompt action. The 
especial interest in her letters is their abundant and exact 
account of social life and especially of domestic economy. 
Energetic, courageous, resourceful, keenly observant, and with 
a clear head for business, Mrs. Osborne shows herself to be. 
Perhaps if we had her letters before the burdens of life fell so 
heavily upon her we might find some hint of the charm in 
Dorothy’s letters, for even Dorothy’s letters after marriage 
became “tame and flat to what was before.” As it is, Mrs. 
Osborne’s letters are valuable for scattered social detail, not 
for any permanent charm of expression. 


Mr. Walter Singer, a dissenting minister of Frome, was early 
left a widower with three daughters. Two of Elizabeth Singer, 
these daughters showed while still young excep- Mrs. Rowe 
tionally good minds and a natural interest in 74-737) 
study. One daughter, who died at nineteen, was devoted to 
medicine and collected books on that subject. Elizabeth 
preferred drawing and poetry. She began drawing when her 
fingers could hardly hold the pencil, and she squeezed out 
the juices of plants to make colors. Her father furnished her 
an excellent master, and she attained sufficient skill so that 
throughout her life her work was highly prized by her friends. 
She also loved music “‘to excess.” But poetry was her chief 
delight. She began writing at twelve, and by the time she was 
twenty-two she had on hand a store of verse so pleasing to her 
friends that they insisted on its publication, and there ac- 
cordingly appeared a thin little volume in 1696 under the 
title Poems on Several Occasions. Written by Philomela. The 


158 THE LEARNED LADY 


“Preface to the Reader,” by one Elizabeth Johnson, is another 
of many contemporary indications of feminine irritation at the 
limitations imposed upon them. Miss Johnson allows “Man- 
kind the Brutal Advantages of Strength,” but when they “wou’d 
Monopolize Sence too, when neither that, nor Learning, nor so 
much as W7t”’ is granted the women, they are forced to protest 
against such “notorious Violations on the Liberties of Free-born 
English Women.” “This makes the Meekest Worm amongst us 
all, ready to turn agen when we are thus trampled on; But alas! 
What can we do to Right our selves? stingless and harmless as 
we are, we can only Kiss the Foot that hurts us.”’ But it some- 
times pleases Heaven to succor a distressed people by sending 
them some bright genius, “an Epaminondas, a Timoleon, a 
Nassaw.”’ “Nor is our Defenceless Sex forgotten — we have not 
only Banduca’s and Zenobia’s, but Sappho’s, and Behn’s, and 
Schurman’s, and Orinda’s, who have humbled the most haughty 
of our Antagonists, and made ’em do Homage to our Wit, as well 
as our Beauty.”’ Miss Singer’s consent to the publication of this 
volume was gained only by a promise of strict anonymity, and 
the “Philomela,” then chosen as a pen-name through a naive 
adaptation of “Singer,” became her permanent appellation. 

One interesting fact with regard to these early poems is 
the indication we have of a kind of poetical commerce main- 
tained among the members of a group of persons similarly 
inclined to verse. Philomela writes a Pindarick Poem on Hab- 
bakuk which she sends to “The Athenians” and they respond 
with a poem beginning, 


We yield! we yield! the Palm, bright Maid! be thine! 


She sends a Poetical Question to the Athenians and gets a long 
answer. The Vanity of the World and The Wish are likewise 
addressed to the Athenians and have similar responses. In a 
Pindarick to the Athenian Society she brings as “Zealous Trib- 
ute,” “The early products of a Female muse,”’ praising espe- 
cially their piety and heroic sentiments and the courage with 
which they have lashed the darling vices of the times. 


IN ENGLAND FROM 1650 TO 1760 159 


A friendship so exalted and immense, 
A female breast did ne’er before commence. 


A little poem in humorous vein, To one that persuades me to 
‘leave the Muses, gives some account of her school-days. “I 
fairly bid the Boarding Schools farewell,” “Old Governess 
farewell with all my heart,” are lines indicative of her attitude. 


Spite of her heart, Old Puss shall damn no more 
Great Sedley’s Plays, and never look ’em o’re; 
Affront my Novels, no, nor in a Rage, 

Force Dryden’s lofty Products from the Stage, 
Whilst all the rest of the melodious crew, 

With the whole System of Athenians too, 

For Study’s sake out of the Window flew. 

But I, to Church, shall fill her Train no more, 
And walk as if I sojurn’d by the hour. 


Tn like vein she bids adieu to “dancing days,” singing lessons, 
Japan work, and even her “esteemed Pencil,” and vows to give 
herself to poetry. And true it is that the rest of her life is mainly 
of literary and pious significance. When young her beauty and 
charm had resulted in “‘a train of lovers,” but no one of them, 
not even Mr. Prior, the poet, could lure her from her serene 
solitude — possibly because she was “destined by heaven for 
the possession of another gentleman.” At any rate, she went 
smoothly on with her chosen literary life till she was thirty-six, 
when she married Mr. Thomas Rowe, thirteen years younger 
than herself, but of like tastes and himself an author. Their 
extraordinarily happy life together was brought to a close by 
his death in 1715, and, after this five years of happiness, she 
spent the twenty-seven years of her widowhood in a stricter 
solitude, a more absorbed religious communion, a completer 
devotion to literary pursuits, than before her marriage. Her 
essays, her poems, her letters, were the events of her life. She 
had early come to know the family of Lord Weymouth at Long- 
leate. Mr. Thynne had taught her French and Italian; various 
members of the family and various family events were cele- 
brated in her verse. She was on most intimate terms with the 


160 THE LEARNED LADY 


Countess of Hertford and corresponded with her for many 
years. Over a hundred of her letters to the Countess were pub- 
lished in The Works of Mrs. Elizabeth Rowe and Mr. Thomas 
Rowe, and though they make dull and monotonous reading 
now were highly esteemed at the time. In fact, the modest and 
anonymous Philomela had great eighteenth-century vogue. 
She had the friendship of many in the great world, she was 
abundantly praised by poets and divines, and her works went 
through numerous editions. Her husband said that she com- 
bined the fire and passion of Aphra Behn with the chaste purity 
of Mrs. Katherine Philips. But Astrea’s passion underwent 
some strange alchemy when it was transmuted into Philomela’s 
religious ecstasy. Orinda’s purity was fatal to the combination. 
Yet Mrs. Rowe’s “divine transports” have — Mr. Watts 
admits it — sometimes a soft and passionate sound, even an 
amorous note, capable of misinterpretation, but evidently 
reminiscent of the Songs of Solomon, beloved of her youth. It 
was not an age for enthusiasms and ecstasies. That her 
“flights” were so popular may possibly be explained by the fact 
that through them all she was curiously prosaic and intellectu- 
ally commonplace. 


Mr. Ballard speaks of “Mrs. Bland,! a Yorkshire gentle- 
woman so well skilled in Hebrew that she 

prea taught it to her son and daughter.” Mrs. 
Bland was born about 1660 and married Mr. 

Nathaniel Bland in 1681. Her instructor in Hebrew was Lord 
Van Helmont from whom she learned to write the language 
with great exactness. At the request of Mr. Thoresby she 
wrote a Phylactery in Hebrew and presented it to the Royal 
Society, where it was preserved among their curiosities. Mr. 
Bland became Lord of the Manor at Beeston and Mr. Thoresby 
visited him there. To the astonishment of the guest Martha 
Bland, the young daughter of the house, was translating He- 


1 Thoresby: Diary, May 13, 1709; May 1, 1713; April 22, 1716; Sept. 2, 
1716. 


IN ENGLAND FROM 1650 TO 1760 161 


brew into English, having been taught by “that ingenious 
gentlewoman,” her mother. Four years later Mr. Thoresby 
took his son Ralph to see “Mrs. Bland, the Hebrician.”’ She 
had also studied Anglo-Saxon, for she borrowed Elizabeth 
Elstob’s book from Mr. Thoresby and kept it long enough 
to copy out the grammar part. 


Miss Jane Barker is a literary lady whose productions belong 
in two epochs. Her collected poems appeared jyics jane 
in 1688 under the title Poetical Recreations: Barker 
Consisting of Original Poems, Songs, Odes, etc. Gnben- 2129) 
With Several New Translations. In Two Parts, Part I. Occa- 
sionally Written by Mrs. Jane Barker. Part II. By Several 
Gentlemen of the Universities, and Others. Twenty-seven years 
after the publication of this verse Miss Barker again came be- 
fore the public, this time as a writer of romances which proved 
very popular. They were collected under the title The Enier- 
taining Novels of Mrs. Jane Barker, and a second edition had 
appeared by 1719. In 1723 she brought out A Patch-Work 
Screen for the Ladies; or Love and Virtue Recommended: In a 
Collection of Instructive Novels. Related after a Manner intirely 
New, and interspersed with Rural Poems, describing the Inno- 
cence of a Country Life. By Mrs. Jane Barker, of Wilsthorp, 
near Stamford, in Lincolnshire. 

The long silence between the verse of 1688 and the romances 
of 1715-26 is unbroken by any explanatory hint or reference. 
Yet Miss Barker had but one story to tell and that was told in 
her youth. In her novels she uses the characters, events, and 
emotions recorded in her early verse. Under the form of a 
sustained narration, with the addition of much in the way of 
romantic adventure, they make more entertaining reading, 
but offer no essentially new elements. The fifth novel, Clodius 
and Scipiana, is perhaps but an enlargement of a romance 


1 The most complete account of Miss Barker is in an inaugural dissertation 
by Karl Stanglmaier, Berlin, 1966, entitled Mrs. Jane Barker. Ein Beitrag zur 
Englischen Literaturgeschichte. : 


162 THE LEARNED LADY 


entitled Scipina, which had been published and concerning 
which she had received several congratulatory poems, before 
1688.1 

One persistent element in Miss Barker’s verse and prose is 
autobiographic reference. Especially is this true of the poems, 
The Amours of Bosvil and Galesia and A Patch-Work Screen. 
From these sources various facts emerge concerning Miss 
Barker’s life and personality. 

She says that she was sent at first to the “ Putney School,” 
but that she was taken home at about ten by her mother who 
had come to consider such schools as “Academies of Vanity 
and Expense, no Way instructive in the Rudiments of a Coun- 
try Gentlewoman’s Life.” At fifteen she was sent to London 
under the care of an aunt to learn “Town Politeness.” ? Her 
father lived near Cambridge,’ and through her brother, a Cam- 
bridge man, she was well known in the younger literary set 
at the University. The praise accorded her verse was excessive. 
“Philaster” of St. John’s hails her as the true heiress of the 
great Orinda. To “C. G.” she is the Elijah for whose mantle 
meaner poets wait. “Enxilius,” also of St. John’s, celebrates 
the miracles of her Almighty Pen. “S. C.” wonders to see men 
“tug at Classic Oars” and “sweat over Horace” when along 
comes a lady who without effort utters “well-shapt Fancy and 
true Digested Thought.” “Fidelius”’ rejoices to see “ Physick 


1“To Mrs. Jane Barker on her most Delightful and Excellent Romance of 
Scipina, now in the Press.” 

“To my Ingenius Friend Mrs. Jane Barker, on my Publishing her Ro- 
mance of Scipina.” 

Both of these poems are in Part 1 of Poetical Recreations (1688). ‘The second 
one is by Benjamin Crayle. 

2 Amours of Bosvil and Galesia, pp. 3-4. 

3 In the second edition of the Entertaining Novels (1719), in a dedication to 
the Countess of Exeter, Miss Barker says, “‘Was it not Burleigh House with 
its Park, &c., that formed in me the first idea of my Scipio’s country retreat? 
Most sure it was, for when I composed my Romance I knew nothing further 
from home than Burleigh and Warthorp.” These two seats of the Exeter fam- 
ily are about seven miles from Wilsthorp. (Notes and Queries, Series 1x, no. 10, 
p. 171.) Miss Baker lived at Wilsthorp which is near Stamford and only about 
forty miles from Cambridge. 


IN ENGLAND FROM 1650 TO 1760 163 


and Anatomie done into purest Verse.” And “J. N.,” Fellow 
of St. John’s, praises her Scipina as writ in lines, 


More than Astrea’s soft, more than Orinda’s Chaste. 


Another gentleman from St. John’s said that she surpassed 
“the Scaroons and Scudderies of France” and showed that 
England could originate as well as translate. Miss Barker 
was evidently in the stimulating and unusual position of being 
the temporary literary idol of an academic coterie. 

There was a false lover in Miss Barker’s early life who, as 
“Strephon” in verse ? and as “Bosvil”’ in prose,’ is copiously 
written up along with her own emotional experiences as “‘Ga- 
lesia.”” The most interesting portion of the affair has to do with 
Galesia’s original ways of reéstablishing her happiness. She 
found comfort in contemplating the wonderful works of Crea- 
tion.4 She wandered along shady paths, by little streams, and 
through the meadows. She loved the early morning, the eve- 
ning dews, the starry night sky. There is no felicitous phrasing 
in the references to nature, but the fact remains that Galesia 
found in nature a satisfaction and sometimes an exaltation 
quite foreign to the heroines of her time. 

Galesia’s second resource is study. She says of this new 
occupation: 

Finding myself abandon’d by Bosvil and thinking it impossible ever 
‘ to love any Mortal more, resolv’d to espouse a Book, and spend my 
Days in Study . . . l[imagin’d my self the Orinda or Sapho of my Time. 
In order to this, I got my brother, who was not yet return’d to Oxford,° 
to set me in the way to learn my Grammar, which he really did, think- 
ing it...a Freak without Foundation to be overthrown by the first 
Difficulty I shou’d meet with in the Syntax, knowing it to be less easy to 
make Substantive and Adjective agree, than to place a Patch or Curl.® 


Her indulgent brother, when he came back from his studies 
abroad, also taught her medicine. With him she went on long 


1 Barker, Jane: Poems, passim. 2 Poems: “To my Unkind Strephon.” 
3 In Amours of Bosvil and Galesia and A Patch-Work Screen. 

4 Amours, p. 11. 

5 Mr. Barker studied at both Universities, 6 Amours, p. 13. 


164 THE LEARNED LADY 


“simpling”’ excursions to gather flowers for the “large natural 
Herbal ” they were making. With him she read “‘ Bartholine, 
Walzus, Harvey, his Circulatio Sanguinis, and Lower’s Mo- 
tion of the Heart.” 1 She learned to write prescriptions, or 
“bills” as she called them, in Latin, with the same “Cyphers 
and Directions as Doctors do,” so that even the apothecaries 
were misled and filled her “bills” with those of the regular 
physicians.” She also ventured on something in the way of 
practice and gained some repute for curing cases of gout given 
up by the doctors.* She began to abandon the Muses for Para- 
celsus. Or if she wrote poems the processes of digestion and the 
circulation of the blood were her themes.’ If the shackles of 
rhyme hindered scientific accuracy of statement, she squared 
herself with facts by abundant footnotes in which the proper 
Latin terminology was given full scope. Her interest in medi- 
cine was a vital one. She even thanks Strephon, through whose 
falsity she had been driven to study, and had so gained a joy 
beyond “the sottish ease” that waits on love. In her new love 
of learning she even took a vow of virginity: 
In this happy life let me remain, 
Fearless of twenty-five and all its train 


Of slights or scorns, or being call’d Old Maid, 
Those Goblings which so many have betray’d.® 


Somewhat later Galesia gained a complete victory over her 
lovelorn self by a most original and sensible method. She took 
entire charge of her father’s farm. She planned the work, hired 
the laborers, superintended in person the occupations of each 
day, paid the wages, and kept the accounts. The wholesome 
interests of each day and equally wholesome fatigue at night 
left no intervals in which to regret her lost lover.® 

Galesia’s recourse to hard study and responsible farm man- 
agement as a cure for a wounded heart sets her as a heroine in a 

1 4 Patch-Work Screen, p. 10. 2 Tbid.,.p. 56. 

3 Poems, “On the Apothecary’s Filing my Bills amongst the Doctors.” 


4 Poems : “A Farewell to Poetry with a Long Digression on Anatomy.” 
5 Poems: “A Virgin Life.” 6 Amours, pp. 44-46. 


IN ENGLAND FROM 1650 TO 1760 165 


class by herself. She is so sensible and reasonable as to seem 
out of place in a romance. It is therefore something of a sur- 
prise to find her out-distancing the most sentimental in sighs 
and sobs and tears. Her utterance in recounting the baseness 
of Bosvil, “It is fitting that I should weep on all occasions,” 
might serve as her permanent order of business. “My sighs 
alternately blew up my Tears and my Tears allay’d my Sighs” 
till “‘fresh Reflections rais’d new Gusts of Sorrow,” describes 
her stormy woes. Sometimes she is able to restrain “the briny 
Ebullition,” but usually “a new Flux of Tears” breaks down 
all barriers. 

With the death of her brother the joy of Galesia’s life went 
out. Books and medicine lost their charm. Without his in- 
spiring presence all her occupations became insipid. Her view 
of learned women also changed. She says a learned woman is 
as ridiculous as a spinning Hercules; that books are as unfit for 
women as paint, washes, and patches are for a man; that a 
studious woman and an effeminate man may be classed to- 
gether as out of their sphere. A learned woman is “like a 
Fore’d Plant that never has its due or proper Relish but is 
wither’d by the first Blast,” or “like the Toad in the Fable, that 
affected to swell itself as big as the Ox,” and burst in the enter- 
prise.! This bitter view of learning comes only in the novels, 
and probably indicates some unhappy experiences on Miss 
Barker’s part since the days when her muse was honored by the 
University wits. 


Celia Fiennes was the daughter of Colonel Nathaniel Fiennes 
and the sister of the third Viscount Saye and Celia Fiennes 
Sele. The one book by which she is known is (4: 1691-1703) 
Through England on a Side Saddle in the Time of William and 
Mary, Being the Diary of Celia Fiennes, first published in 1888 
by the Honorable Mrs. Griffith, to whom the original manu- 
script was given by her father, the thirteenth Baron Saye 
and Sele. In her interesting “To the Reader’? Miss Fiennes 

1 Amours, p. 47. 


166 THE LEARNED LADY 


explains that these journeys were undertaken that she might 
regain her health by “variety and change of aire and exercise”’; 
that she picked up such information as came in her way because 
her mind could not remain totally unoccupied; and that she 
wrote down her observations merely for the pleasure of her near 
relations, the manuscript not being designed for more public 
use. She then proceeds to justify her travels: 


Now thus much without vanity may be asserted of the subject, that 
if all persons, both Ladies, much more Gentlemen, would spend some 
of their tyme in Journeys to visit their native Land, and be curious 
to Inform themselves and make observations of the pleasant prospects, 
good buildings, different produces and manufactures of each place, 
with the variety of sports and recreations they are adapt to, would be 
a souveraign remedy to cure or preserve ffrom these Epidemick dis- 
eases of vapours, should J add Laziness? — it would also fform such an 
Idea of England, add much to its Glory and Esteem in our minds and 
cure the evil Itch of over-valueing fforeign parts; at least ffurnish them 
with an Equivalent to entertain strangers when amongst us, Or 
jnform them when abroad of their native Country, which has been 
often a Reproach to the English, ignorance and being strangers to 
themselves. Nay the Ladies might have matter not unworthy their 
observation, soe subject for conversation, within their own compass 
in each country to which they relate, and thence studdy now to be 
serviceable to their neighbours especially the poor among whome they 
dwell, which would spare them the uneasye thoughts how to pass away 
tedious dayes, and tyme would not be a burden when not at a card or 
dice table, and the ffashions and manners of fforeign parts less minded 
and desired. . .. But now I may be justly blamed to pretend to give 
acc: of our Constitution, Customs, Laws, Lect, matters farre above 
my Reach or capacity, but herein I have described what have come 
within my knowledge either by view and reading, or relation from 
others which according to my conception have faithfully Rehearsed, 
but where I have mistaken in any form or subject matter I easily sub- 
mitt to a correction and will enter such Erratas in a supplement an- 
next to y® Book of some particulars since remark’d; and shall conclude 
with a hearty wish and recommendation to all, but Especially my own 
Sex, the studdy of those things which tends to Improve the mind and 
makes our Lives pleasant and comfortable as well as proffitable in all the 
Stages and Stations of our Lives, and render suffering and age support- 
able and Death less fformidable and a future State more happy. 


1 Celia Fiennes: Through England on a Side Saddle, Introduction, pp. ix-xi. 


IN ENGLAND FROM 1650 TO 1760 167 


Miss Fiennes’s separate journeys are not dated, but we know 
that they began before 1691 because the earlier trips from her: 
home at Newtontony in Wiltshire to Bath, to Oxfordshire, to 
“Salsebury,” were taken with her mother, and her mother died 
in 1691. The description of the coronation of Queen Anne 
would indicate that the travels extended beyond 1703. “My 
Northern Journey in May 1697” was one of the most important 
of her travels. She thus records its close: “Thence to Highgate 
6 miles, thence to London 4 miles where I returned and all our 
Company Blessed be God very well wttout any disaster or 
_trouble in 7 weeks tyme about 635 miles that we went to- 

gether.” ! Cambridge, Ely, Peterborough, Nottingham, Lin- 
coln, Hull, and Scarborough, indicate their general route north. 
Encouraged by the success of this difficult trip, Miss Fiennes 
determined upon a still more hazardous enterprise. “My great 
Journey to Newcastle and to Cornwall” ? records a remarkable 
achievement. She went north to Peterborough; then west to 
Chester; then north by way of Liverpool, Preston, Lancaster, 
Kendall, Lake Windermere, Ambleside, Ulswater, Penrith, 
Carlisle, and so over into the edge of Scotland; then east to 
Newcastle; then southwest by Durham, Manchester, Worces- 
ter, Exeter, Plymouth, Land’s End; and finally home to 
Newtontony. 

Arthur Young is famous for his English tours, but his trav- 
els are nearly three quarters of a century later than those of 
Miss Fiennes.* Gray’s notable visit to the Lakes was in 1769. 
In 1756-1766 Amory, in his Life of John Buncle, described the 
Lake Region, and as early as 1760 Dr. Brown wrote a letter 
praising the Lakes. But Celia Fiennes’s visit and descrip- 
tion belong at the very beginning of the century and confer 
upon her the honors belonging to the pioneer. Her book has 
also a distinctive interest of its own. I cannot forbear to 
quote her account of her journey through the Westmoreland 
Hills: 

1 Celia Fiennes: Through England on a Side Saddle, p. 99. 
2 Jbid., p. 114. 3 Between 1667 and 1771. 


168 THE LEARNED LADY 


Thence I Rode almost all the waye in sight of this great water [Winder- 
mere], some tymes I lost it’ by reason of y*® great hills interposeing 
and so a Continu’d up hill and down hill and that pretty steep, even 
when I was in that they Called bottoms w“" are very rich good ground, 
and so I gained by degrees from Lower to higher hills w** I alwayes 
went up and down before I came to another hill. At last I attained to 
the side of one of these hills or ffells of Rocks, w“ I passed on the side 
much about the Middle, for Looking down to the bottom it was at 
Least a Mile all full of those Lesser hills and jnclosures, so Looking 
upward I was as farre from the Top which was all Rocks, and some- 
thing more barren tho there was some trees and wood growing in. y® 
Rocks and hanging over all down y* Brow of some of the hills. From 
these great ffells there are severall springs out of y® Rock that trickle 
down their sides, and as they meete with stones and Rocks in the way, 
when something obstructs their passage and so they Come with more 
violence, that gives a pleaseing sound and murmuring noise. ... As 
I walked down at this place I was walled on both sides by those inac- 
cessible high rocky barren hills w* hangs over ones head in some places 
and appears very terrible, and from them springs many Little Cur- 
rents of water from the sides and Clefts, w°" trickle down to some 
Lower part where it runs swiftly over the stones and shelves in the 
way, w" makes a pleasant Rush and murmuring noise.! 


Wordsworth’s “And all the air is filled with pleasant noise of 
waters,” has here an interesting early statement. Of Ulswater, 
she says: 

I rode the whole Length of this water by its side, sometyme a Little 
higher upon the side of the hill and sometyme just by the shore. ... 


I observed the boundaries of all these great waters (which are a sort of 
deep Lakes or kind of standing waters) are these sort of Barren Rocky 


hill w°" are so vastly high. I Call this a standing water because its not - 


like other great Rivers as y* Trent, Severne, Hull or Thames, etc. to 
appear to Run w' a streame or Current but only as it Rowles from 
side to side Like waves as the wind moves it.” 


As a rule scenery is but slightly touched upon. Miss Fi- 
ennes’s interest was in roads, bridges, markets, dwellings and 
grounds, churches; in the quality and price of food, in dress, in 
pictures and furniture, in manners and customs; in pageantry, 


1 Celia Fiennes: Through England on a Side Saddle, p. 163. 
2 Ibid., p. 165., 


~ 


IN ENGLAND FROM 1650 TO 1760 169 


processions, and ceremonials. Her description of the customs at 
Bath, of the funeral of Queen Mary, of the Lord Mayor’s Day 
in London, may be taken as illustrative of her method of writ- 
ing. Her manuscript was printed verbaiim, and that was, 
indeed, the only course to pursue. Any attempt to correct 
or methodize, or modernize it, would result almost in rewriting 
it. Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, a generation later, was a 
keen observer of affairs in Turkey, but Miss Fiennes surpasses 
her in fullness of detail. Nothing escapes her quick, accurate 
eye, her sharply retentive memory, and her unwearied pen. 
The facts crowd in upon each other with breathless haste. 
There is no such thing as grace or melody or beauty of style. 
There is hardly anything so tranquilizing as order and clear- 
ness. There is no time for any personal reactions on the things 
seen. There is only here and there a reflection, there are only 
the scantiest notes on people. But there is an astounding 
assemblage of external facts, undiscriminating, uninterpreted, 
unenlivened by a spark of emotion or imagination, but, in their 
total effect, genuinely impressive. What energy, what courage, 
what endurance, it required for a woman to make these unusual 
and very difficult journeys! And yet at first reading the dry, 
rapid, confused narrative is as uninspiring as a guidebook. 
It is only gradually that we become conscious of the burning 
enthusiasm that kept Miss Fiennes at her self-imposed task. 
She had the zeal of a devotee with the intellectual method of 
a chronicler or maker of inventories. But whatever may be 
the counts against her style, there can be no deductions from the 
high estimate of her book as a contribution to social history. 
And still more must it stand to her credit that not only no 
other woman, but no man of her day knew so much about 
England as did this earliest of the women travelers. 


A lady who can in the strictest interpretation of the word 
be called learned is Elizabeth Elstob. For this fizabeth Elstob 
reason and because she is very little known, I (1683-1756) 
shall give as full an account as I have been able to obtain. In 


170 THE LEARNED LADY 


Ballard’s Collection of Original Letters, in the Bodleian Library 
are several to him from Miss Elstob, and among them is the 
following brief memoir of her life, in her own handwriting, 
enclosed in a letter dated November 23, 1738: 


Elizabeth Elstob, Daughter of Ralph and Jane Elstob,! was born in 
the Parish of St. Nicholas, in New Castle upon Tyne, September the 
twenty ninth, sixteen hundred and eightysthree. From her child- 
hood she was a great lover of books, which being observed by her 
mother, who was also a great admirer of learning, especially in her own 
sex, there was nothing wanting for her improvement, so long as her 
mother lived. But being so unfortunate as to lose her when she was 
about eight years old, and when she had but just gone thro’ her 
accidence and grammar, there was a stop put to her progress in learn- 
ing for some years. For her brother being under age when her mother 
died, she was under the guardianship of a relation, who was no friend 
to women’s learning, so that she was not suffered to proceed, notwith- 
standing her repeated requests that she might, being always put off 
with that common and vulgar saying that one tongue is enough for a 
woman. However, this discouragement did not prevent her earnest 
endeavours to improve her mind, in the best manner she was able, not 
only because she had a natural inclination to books herself, but in 
obedience to her excellent mother’s desire. She therefore employed 
most of her time in reading such English and French books (which 
last language she with much difficulty obtained leave to learn) as she 
could meet with till she went to live with her brother, who very joy- 


1 In Nichols: Literary Anecdotes, vol. tv, p. 139, is this statement: “From an- 
other of Miss Elstob’s letters in the same collection [letters to Mr. Ballard] 
it appears that Dr. Hickes was her grandfather by the mother’s side; a cir- 
cumstance which may account for her proficiency, if not for the origin of her 
Saxon studies.” I have not as yet found confirmation of this relationship. 
In the letters and dedications to him the brother and sister put forward no 
claim to relationship, and in the letter Dr. Hickes wrote in behalf of Wiliam 
Elstob and in those written in approbation of Miss Elstob’s work, there is no 
indication that he was asking help for his grandchildren. The Dictionary of 
National Biography says that Dr. Hickes “left no children,” a statement 
slightly ambiguous, for while it conveys the impression that he had no children, 
it might be literally true even if Jane Elstob were his daughter, for she died 
about twenty-four years before he did. Nichols in Intezary Anecdotes speaks 
of an Elstob pedigree “accompanied by another pedigree of Mrs. Elstob’s 
mother.” These were on a single leaf fastened into Richard St. George’s 
Visitation of the County of Durham (1615), among the MSS. of the Harleian 
Collection. 


ELIZABETH ELSTOB 


From a drawing by herself engraved in an initial for her 
translation of The Pastoral of St. Gregory, 1709, and 
used also in her Grammar in 1713 


IN ENGLAND FROM 1650 TO 1760 171 


fully and readily assisted and encouraged her, in her studies, with 
whom she laboured very hard as long as she lived. In that time she 
translated and published an Essay on Glory, written in French by the 
celebrated Mademoiselle de Scudery, and published an English- 
Saxon Homily on the Birthday of St. Gregory, with an English trans- 
lation and Notes, etc. Also the Rudiments of Grammar for the Eng- 
lish-Saxon Tongue. She designed, if ill fortune had not prevented her, 
to have published all Alfrick’s Homilies, of which she made an entire 
transcript, with the various readings from other manuscripts, and had 
translated several of them into English. She likewise took an exact 
copy of the Textus Roffensis upon vellum, now in the library of that 
great and generous encourager of learning, the Right Honourable the 
Earl of Oxford. And transcribed all the Hymns, from an ancient 
Manuscript belonging to the Church of Sarum. She had several other 
designs, but was unhappily hindered, by a necessity of getting her 
bread, which with much difficulty, labour, and ill health, she has 
endeavoured to do for many years, with very indifferent success. If 
it had not been that Almighty God was graciously pleased to raise her 
up lately some generous and good friends, she could not have sub- 
sisted, to whom she always was, and will, by the grace of God, be 
most faithful.+ 


The brother of whom Miss Elstob speaks was William Elstob, 
who was ten years older than she. At eleven he was sent to 
Eton. At sixteen he went to Cambridge, and later to Oxford, 
where he was finally, in 1696, elected fellow of University Col- 
lege. In 1702 he became rector of the united parishes of St. 
Swithin and St. Mary Bothaw, in London, where he died in 
1715 at the age of forty-two. He was a highly trained linguist, 
a great lover of antiquities, and one of the most promising 
Anglo-Saxon scholars of his time. He apparently had liberal 
sentiments concerning the education of women, so that as soon 
as his sister came under his care all her desires for study were 
gratified. Just when she went to Oxford is not certain, but it 
was probably about the time he took his fellowship, when she 
was thirteen. She gives the date of her entrance upon her 
Anglo-Saxon studies as 1698, when she was fifteen. In that year 
her brother had made a transcript of King Alfred’s version of 


1 Walker, John: Letters of Eminent Persons, vol. 1, pp. 243-46; Nichols: 
Literary Anecdotes, vol. tv, pp. 112-40, “The Elstobs.” 


172 THE LEARNED LADY 


the Latin historian Orosius which he designed to publish. She 
wished to understand it and says, “Having gained the Alpha- 
bet, I found it so easy, and in it so much the grounds of our 
present Language, and of a more particular Agreement with 
some Words which I had heard when very young in the North, 
as drew me to be more inquisitive after Books written in that 
Language.” Her brother was well pleased and recommended 
the Saxon Heptatuch. From this she went on to other treatises, 
and finally began to divert herself with taking transcripts of 
such ancient manuscripts as she could find. She proved to be 
particularly facile with her pen. The copies she made of the 
old manuscripts were said to be marvels in the way of beauty 
and accuracy of lettering. Her copy of the Textus Roffensis 
is described by Nichols as “one of the most lovely specimens 
of modern Saxon writing that can be imagined.” She was well 
received in the University, for Mr. Rowe Mores speaks of her 
as “the indefessa comes of her brother’s studies, a female 
student in the University and a favourite of Dr. Hudson and 
the Oxonians.”’* In 1702 she went with her brother to Lon- 
don and they kept on in their work together with great eager- 
ness and satisfaction. There gradually grew up in Miss 
Elstob’s mind a desire to translate and publish some Anglo- 
Saxon manuscript. She was encouraged in this not only by 
her brother, but by Dr. Hickes, “the great patron of the 
Septentrional Studies,” who said that by publishing somewhat 
in Saxon she might invite “the ladies to be acquainted with 
the Language of their Predecessors, and the Original of their 
Mother Tongue.” The text finally determined upon was the 
Homily on the Birthday of St. Gregory. Dr. Hudson, “a man 
of so generous a mind as not to discourage learning, even in the 
female sex,” gave her access to the ancient parchment Book of 
Homilies in the Bodleian. The book on St. Gregory appeared 
in 1709 under the title, An English-Saxon Homily on the Birth- 


1 Preface to Miss Elstob’s Homily on the Birthday of St. Gregory. 
2 Nichols, Literary Anecdotes, vol. tv, p. 130. “Dissertation on Letter 
Founders,” by Edward Rowe Mores. 


IN ENGLAND FROM 1650 TO 1760 173 


Day of St. Gregory: Anciently used in the English-Saxon Church. 
Giving an Account of the Conversion of the English from Pagan- 
ism to Christianity. Translated into Modern English, with Notes. 
It was a stately and dignified volume with a full-page engraving 
by Gribelin, and many engraved letters and head and tail 
pieces. In the capital “G” of Gregory was a portrait of Miss 
Elstob done by herself.! The Dedication to Queen Anne apolo- 
gizes for using a language so “out-dated and antiquated,” 
a language which “few Men and none of the other Sex have 
ventured to converse with” since the time when it was the 
current speech. But she adroitly pays the necessary compli- 
ment and at the same time recommends her theme, by pointing 
out that Anglo-Saxon was the language in which the Pious 
Progenitors of Queen Anne had received the Orthodox Faith 
of which the Queen was the undoubted Defender. The Preface, 
sixty pages long, is a learned account of the introduction of 
Christianity into England. In the text the Saxon and English 
are in parallel columns, and there is a brave apparatus of notes 
and comments. Following the English-Saxon Homily is a 
Latin version by William Elstob which he presents to his sister 
with the following Latin letter: 
Gulielmus Elistobius 
ELIZABETHZE 
Sorort sue carissime 
SD 

Dum tu, soror mea dilectissima, Homilie Saronice, de gentis nostre 
Conversione paras versionem Anglicam feminis liberalibus: nonnulli 
forte ex amicis nostris, tum Academicis tum aliis, Latinam postulant homi- 
nibus eruditis. Id te velle accomodare venis ad me dicens, bene autem posse 
negastt. Verecundius sane id quam verius. Sed favendum omnino vere- 
cundie, presertim muliebri: mazimé autem tue, cum in te virtus illa sit 

1 Mr. Rowe Mores, in Dissertation on Letier Founders, says of Miss Elstob: 
“Tn her latter years she was tutoress in the family of the Duke of Portland, 
where we have visited her in her sleeping-room at Bulstrode, surrounded with 
books and dirtiness, the usual appendages of the folks of learning. But if any 
one wishes to see her as she was when she was the favorite of Dr. Hudson 
and the Ozonians, they may view her portraiture in the initial G of The Eng- 
lish Saxon homily on the birthday of St. Gregory.” This portrait is repeated in 
his Grammar. 3 


174 THE LEARNED LADY 


notissima. Quare, quod poscis, dulcis & indefessa studiorum meorum 
comes, do tibi Latiné. Non Ciceroniane, ut tu velis, id est ornate, at non 
imepté tamen: tisdem feré verbis repositis que in Saxonica olim tansfusa, 
vel ex Turonensi Gregorio, vel tuo, vel ex Beda nostrate, vel utroque Dia- 
cono, & Johanne & Paulo. Eadem plane ratione, qua jam pridem Oro- 
sium a nobis elucubratum scis, & qua Gregorii tui Curam Pastoralem, 
Deo favente, & adjutrice te, Eruditis perlibenter darem. Vale. 
Kal. Jun. moccrx. 


The book was published by subscription and the list of sub- 
scribers is an interesting one. We, of course, find the Anglo- 
Saxon scholars, such as Mr. Thwaites ! and Dr. Hickes, various 
Oxonians, the Elstobs of Canterbury and Durham, and others 
who were in the same religious or learned circles. Various let- 
ters to Ralph Thoresby ? show his interest. In March, 1708-09, 
she sent him the frontispiece to the Homily saying there would 
be other ornaments in the way of borders and letters “which 
will make the book somewhat dear, but I would willingly have 
it as beautiful as possible.” In May, 1709, she thanks him for 
procuring “‘so noble a number of encouragers” to her work. 
Nearly half of the two hundred and sixty subscribers are 
women. Lady Elizabeth Hastings and Lady Catharine Jones, 
Mary Astell’s friends, are there; and Lady Winchilsea’s 
friends, the Thynnes, the Worseleys, and the Thanets, but 
not Mary Astell or Lady Winchilsea. The literary set — 
Pope, Swift, Gay, Addison, Steele—is not represented. 
Women of title, clergymen, and scholars make up the list.® 

The Preface is of personal as well as learned interest. Miss 
Elstob did not enter upon the career of authorship without an 
uneasy recognition of the opprobrium she might bring upon 
herself by aspirations so unfeminine. She was, in her own mind, 
fortified by the elegant Latin treatise in which “Mrs. Anna 
Maria 4 Schurman, that Glory of her Sex,” had answered, with 

1 In the “G” of Gregorium is a portrait of Mr. Thwaites as St. Gregory. 
(Nichols: Literary Anecdotes, vol. tv, p. 131.) 

2 Letters of Eminent Men addressed to Ralph Thoresby, F. R. S. 


3 A new edition of this Homily was brought out by William Pickering, 
Leicester, 1839. 


IN ENGLAND FROM 1650 TO 1760 175 


due scholastic form and dignity, the usual objections made by 
Gentlemen to Women’s Learning, but in deference to the read- 
ers of her Homily she felt the necessity of a few words of self 
justification: 


For first, I know it will be said, What has a Woman to do with 
Learning? This I have known urged by some Men, with an Envy 
unbecoming that greatness of Soul, which is said to dignify their Sex. 
... Where is the Fault in Womens seeking after Learning? why are 
they not to be valu’d for acquiring to themselves the noblest Orna- 
ments? what hurt can this be to themselves? what Disadvantage to 
others? But there are two things usually opposed against Womens 
Learning. That it makes them impertinent, and neglect their house- 
hold Affairs. Where this happens it isa Fault. But it is not the Fault 
of Learning, which rather polishes and refines our Nature, and teaches 
us that Method and Regularity, which disposes us to greater Readi- 
ness and Dexterity in all kinds of Business. I do not observe it so 
frequently objected against Womens Diversions, that They take them 
off from Household Affairs. Why therefore should those few among 
us, who are Lovers of Learning, altho’ no better account cou’d be given 
of it than its being a Diversion, be deny’d the Benefit and Pleasure of 
it, which is both so innocent and improving... . I shall not enter into 
any more of the Reasons why some Gentlemen are so eager to deny us 
this privilege: I am more surprised, and even ashamed, to find any of 
the Ladies were more violent than they, in carrying on the same 
charge. Who despairing to arrive at any eminent or laudable degree 
of knowledge, seem totally to abandon themselves to Ignorance, 
contenting themselves to sit down in Darkness, as if they either had 
not Reason, or it were not capable by being rightly cultivated, of bring- 
ing them into the Light. ... Admit a Woman may have Learning, is 
there no other kind of Learning to employ her time? What is this 
Saxon? What has she to do with this barbarous antiquated Stuff? 
so useless, so altogether out of the way?...I fear, if things were 
rightly consider’d, that the charge of Barbarity would rather fall upon 
those who, while they fancy themselves adorn’d with the Embellish- 
ments of foreign Learning, are ignorant, even to barbarity, of the 
Faith, Religion, the Laws and Customs, and Language of their 
Ancestors.! 


It was inevitable that the learning in Miss Elstob’s work 
should be thought of by many as in reality the work of her 


1 Homily on the Birthday of St. Gregory, p. ii. 


176 THE LEARNED LADY 


brother. On this point, towards the close of the Preface, she 
comments rather ambiguously as follows: 


I have been askt the Question, more than once, whether this Per- 
formance was all my own? How properly such a Question may be ask’d 
by those who know with whom I live, I shall not dispute: But since 
some there are who may have a Curiosity to know the same thing, who 
yet suspect the Decency of such a Question: that they may be under 
no Uneasiness on this account, they may be pleas’d to understand that 
I have a kind Brother, who is always ready to assist and encourage me 
in my Studies. I might say much of my Obligations on this account: 
wou'd he permit me to express my self at large on that Subject. But 
as I think it no shame to me to take any Advice where it may be so 
easily obtain’d: so I should think it unpardonable to be guilty of such 
a Silence, as might make me seem averse to all Acknowledgement. 


After the publication of the Homily on the Birthday of St. 
Gregory Miss Elstob made a visit to Canterbury where her 
uncle was prebendary. The number of Canterbury names in 
her list of subscribers shows that her fame for learning had 
preceded her. She was very favorably received, especially by 
some ladies of rank, one of whom expressed a desire to study 
Anglo-Saxon under her direction. In pursuance of this project 
Miss Elstob began at once on the preparation of an Anglo- 
Saxon Grammar. In 1715, when the Grammar finally appeared, 
Miss Elstob wrote thus in a Preface addressed to Dr. Hickes: 


I was more particularly gratified with the new Friendship and Con- 
versation, of a young Lady, whose Ingenuity and Love of Learning is 
well known and esteem’d, not only in that Place, but by yourself: and 
which so far indear’d itself to me, by her promise that she wou’d learn 
the Saxon Tongue, and do me the Honour to be my Scholar, as to make 
me think of composing an English Grammar of that Language for her 
use. That Ladies Fortune hath so disposed of her since that time, and 
hath placed her at so great distance, as that we have had no Opportu- 
nity, of treating farther on this Matter, either by Discourse or Corre- 
spondence. However, though a Work of a larger Extent, and which 
hath amply experienced your Encouragement, did for some time make 


1 This Grammar is ‘‘remarkable for being the first effort to present the study 
of Old English through the medium of modern English.” (Adams, Eleanor N.: 
Old English Scholarship in England from 1566-1800, p. 92.) 


IN ENGLAND FROM 1650 TO 1760 177 


me lay aside this Design, yet I did not wholly reject it. . . . But con- 
sidering the Pleasure I my self had reaped from the Knowledge I have 
gained from this Original of our Mother Tongue, and that others of 
my own Sex might be capable of the same Satisfaction: I resolv’d to 
give them the Rudiments of that Language in an English Dress. 


The long Preface to the Grammar is chiefly taken up with an 
attack on John Brightland, author of the Whole System of Eng- 
lish Education, and other wise grammarians who had spoken 
lightly of Anglo-Saxon and especially of the Thesaurus of Dr. 
Hickes. One of the aspersions cast by the gentlemen on their 
mother tongue was that the Northern Languages “consist of 
nothing but Monosyllables,” and Miss Elstob plunges into a 
lengthy defense of monosyllables with so many quotations 
from English verse as to show that being “mistress of eight 
foreign languages”’ did not prevent her from being exceedingly 
well read in the poetical literature of her own tongue. This 
portion of the Preface is followed by a diatribe against those 
who consider the study of antiquities and of the Saxon tongue 
as belonging to a lower order of mind, and not contributing to 
a “just stile” as do the classics.1 This topic, also, is illustrated 
by literary characterizations so numerous and apt as to show 
wide and discriminating reading in English prose.? 

1 July 31, 1715, Mr. Hearne wrote to Mr. Hickes thanking him for his “ex- 
cellently learned Thesaurus,” and for Mrs. Elstob’s Grammar. He comments 
on her Preface as “‘judicious, learned, and elegant.” He is particularly pleased 
with her remarks on the author of the “Dissertation on reading the Classicks, 
and forming a just stile.” This gentleman was of St. Edmund’s Hall and was 
always looked upon as a vain, flashy person. “I look’d upon him as the most 
unfit Person I knew of a Scholar to write upon this Subject. . . . His book hath 
been sufficiently ridiculed & condemned her by y® best Judges.’ (Hearne’s Col- 
lections, vol. Iv, p. 83.) 

2 An interesting fact in connection with the publication of the Grammar has 
to do witb the type. Some years after the printing of the Homily the house 
of the printer, Mr. Bowyer, was burned and all the Anglo-Saxon type was 
destroyed. They could not have printed the Grammar had not Lord Chief Jus- 
tice Parker provided the funds for cutting new type. In 1753 Mr. N. Bowyer, 
son of the printer of the Grammar, sent this type, as a curiosity, to Mr. Ed- 
ward Rowe Mores with this letter: “I make bold to transmit to Oxford, 
through your hands, the Saxon punches and matrices, which you were pleased 
to intimate would not be unacceptable to that learned Body. It would be a 


178 THE LEARNED LADY 


Miss Elstob was a redoubtable champion in the cause of 
Anglo-Saxon learning. At the beginning of her career, in 1709, 
just as her Homily on the Birthday of St. Gregory was coming 
from the press, Swift had spoken of her as one of the Professors 
in the College of Madonella, ascribing to her the publication 
of “‘two of the choicest Saxon novels, which are said to have 
been in as much repute at Queen Emma’s Court, as the ‘Me- 
moires from the New Atalantis’ are with those of ours.”! This 
disparaging allusion may have predisposed Miss Elstob to 
answer Swift with exceptional energy when he ranged himself 
with the scorners of Anglo-Saxon learning. In 1737 Mr. Ballard, 
in expressing surprise at the appearance of some new opponent 
of Saxon, wrote: “Indeed I thought that the bad success Dean 
Swift had met with in this affair from the incomparably learned 
and ingenious Mrs. Elstob, would have deterred all others from 
once opening their mouths on this head.? 


great satisfaction to me if I could by this means perpetuate the munificence of 
the noble Donor, to whom I am originally indebted for them, the late Lord 
Chief Justice Parker, afterwards Earl of Macclesfield, who, among the numer- 
ous Benefactors which my father met with, after his house was burnt in 1712- 
13, was so good as to procure those types to be cut, to enable him to print Mrs. 
Elstob’s Saxon Grammar. England had not then the advantage of such an 
Artist in Lettercutting as has since arisen: and that as my father received them 
from a great Patron of Learning, his son consigns them to the greatest Semi- 
nary of it.” (Nichols: Literary Anecdotes, vol. 11, pp. 355-59.) In 1768 Mr. 
Edward Rowe Mores presented these punches and matrices to the Society of 
Antiquaries, and the Reverend Mr. Pegge at that time communicated to the 
Society some account of William and Elizabeth Elstob. (Archeologia, 1804, 
vol. 1, p. xxv.) The difficulty in getting good type is shown by the following 
letters: May 19, 1713, Mr. Robert Nelson wrote to Mr. Wanley: “Pray do me 
the favor to write out the Sazon characters for Mr. Bowyer, as you have kindly 
promised; despatch in this affair is of great consequence because my Lord Chief 
Justice Parker does intend to assist towards repairing this misfortune by giving 
bim a set of press letters, and is very uneasy that he is not ready to begin his 
friend’s book which requires these characters to perfect it.” (Anecdotes of 
Bowyer, p. 493.) Mr. Wanley said that he wrote out the letters in the most 
exact and able manner that he could “But it signified little; for when the alpha- 
bet came into the hands of the workman (who was but a blunderer) he 
could not imitate the fine and regular stroke of the pen; so that the letters are 
not only clumsy, but unlike those that I drew. This appears by Mrs. Elstob’s 
Sazon Grammar being the book mentioned by Mr. Nelson.” (Zbid., p. 498.) 
1 Nichols: Illustrations of Interary History, vol. 1, p. 804. 
2 Ibid., vol. Iv, pp. 211-12. 


IN ENGLAND FROM 1650 TO 1760 179 


The Homily and the Grammar gave Miss Elstob, at thirty- 
two, a distinguished place in the world of scholarship. She had 
also shown unusual skill with her pencil. Not only were her 
transcripts of manuscripts noted for their beauty, but she also 
drew admirable portraits. In 1737 Mr. Ballard wrote Mr. 
Joseph Ames: 


I design, if possible, to make a tour to London this Winter, just to 
peep upon a few choice friends, and will bring Miss Elstob’s Life of 
her Brother along with me, to pleasure you with. But you must be 
silent in the affair, for some particular reasons not proper here to be 
mentioned. Besides the above mentioned Life, I have a dozen pieces 
of this fine accomplished gentlewoman’s drawings, amongst which 
are pictures of herself, Dr. Hickes, Mr. Dryden, and Johannes Ogil- 
vius, ete. very masterly done, and, as I am told, very extraordinary 
true likenesses. 


We get no further completed work from Miss Elstob after the 
Grammar of 1715, but the six years between the Homily and the 
Grammar were rich in study and plans. In February, 1708-09, 
Mr. Thoresby wrote to Dr. Richardson: 

Amongst the Authors, I might have mentioned some of the female 
sex; as the Bishop of Sarum’s lady, and Miss Elstob; the former has 
writ a Method of Devotion, the latter translated a piece of Mons. 
Seudery from the French, and added some of her own: and is for giv- 
ing us a more correct Edition of Sir John Spelman’s Saxon Psalms, in 
which tongue she is a great proficient, and has writ that in my Album, 
ete.? 


The “work of larger extent” for which Miss Elstob tempo- 
rarily set aside her Grammar was the proposed publication of a 
Saxon Homilarium with English translations and notes. That 
this Homilarium, which was to have been her great work, was 
well under way by 1712 is indicated by the following letter, 
December 23, 1712, from Dr. Hickes to Dr. Charlett: 


Isuppose you may have seen Miss Elstob, sister to Mr. Elstob, for- 
merly fellow of your Coll. and the MSS. she hath brought to be printed 


1 Nichols: Illustrations of Literary History, vol. tv, p. 213. 
2 Nichols: Zbid., vol. 1, p. 804. 


180 THE LEARNED LADY 


at your press. The University hath acquired much reputation and 
honour at home and abroad, by the Saxon books printed there, as well 
as by those printed in Latin and Greek, and the publication of the 
MSS. she hath brought (the most correct I ever saw or read) will be of 
great advantage to the Church of England against the Papists; for the 
honour of our Predecessors the English Saxon Clergy, especially of 
the Episcopal Order, and the credit of our country to which Miss Elstob 
will be counted abroad as great an ornament in her way, as Madam 
Dacier is to France. I do not desire you to give her all encouragement, 
because I believe you will do it of your own accord from your natural 
temper to promote good and great works. But I desire you to recom- 
mend her, and her great undertaking to others, for she and it are both 
very worthy to be encouraged, and were I at Oxford, I should be a 
great solicitor for her. And had I acquaintance enough with Mr. Vice- 
Chancellor I had troubled him with a letter in her behalf. I will add 
no more but to tell you that the news of Miss Elstob’s encouragement 
at the University will be very acceptable to me, because it will give 
her work credit here, where it shall be promoted to the utmost power 
by your Philo-Sax. and Philo-Goth. and most faithful, humble Servt.? 


In February, 1713, Bedford wrote to Mr. Hearne: “I am to 
desire y® from him to give all y® assistance & encouragement y® 
can to Mrs. Elstob’s work, who is now going down to y® Uni- 
versity again abt it.” 2? Mr. Hearne responded in March: “I 
wish Mrs. Elstob good success. Tho’ if she meet with no better 
Encouragement here than I have done as yet ’t will not be 
great.” ° 

In the same year Mr. Bowyer printed “Some Testimonies 
of Learned Men in favour of the intended edition of the Saxon 
Homilies, concerning the learning of the author of those 
Homilies, and the advantages to be hoped from an edition of 
them.’ And three letters from Miss Elstob to the Lord 
Treasurer show that he solicited and obtained the Queen’s 
Bounty towards printing the Homilies.5 

In spite of all this encouragement the publication of the 

1 Dr. Hickes also wrote strongly in favor of Miss Elstob’s work in his manu- 
script Preface to Orosius. (Nichols: Literary Anecdotes, vol. tv, p. 132.) 

2 Hearne’s Collections, vol. tv, p. 87. 3 Jbid., vol. 1v, p. 93. 


4 Nichols: Anecdotes of Bowyer, p. 48. 
5 Nichols: Literary Anecdotes, vol. tv, pp. 125-27. 


IN ENGLAND FROM 1650 TO 1760 181 


Homilies hung fire for many months. It is possible that the 
death of Mr. Elstob and of Dr. Hickes in 1715 delayed matters 
by depriving Miss Elstob of able advocates and counselors. 
In July, 1716, Sir P. Sydenham indicates his concern that the 
book had not yet appeared.! In November of that year Mr. 
T. Baker writes apologetically to Mr. Hearne that he is “deep 
in M's, Elstop and Mr. Strype,”’ and that the work does not 
admit of haste.? Later in the same month Mr. Hearne gives 
the cheering news that “Mrs. Elstob’s book is going on at 
last.” But only five of the Homilies were actually printed off 
at Oxford.‘ The great scheme failed for want of money. Miss 
Elstob’s own fortune was apparently involved, for in 1718 Mr. 
T. Baker wrote to Hearne that Miss Elstob was “lately gone 
off for debt.” 5 

| Except these few facts concerning the Homilies very few 
details are known concerning Miss Elstob’s life after 1715. 
Bishop Smalridge® aided her for a time, but she could not endure 
the thought of being a burden on her friends, and she finally 
went to Evesham, Worcestershire, where she started a little 
school. Mr. Tindale, in his History of Evesham, says that he 
was credibly informed that her weekly stipend in this school 
was at first but a groat a week. She was in this very contracted 
and difficult way of life for nearly twenty years. When relief 
came it was as the result of the efforts of an obscure young 
Anglo-Saxon scholar, Mr. George Ballard, a lady’s-stay-maker, 

1 Hearne’s Collections, vol. v, p. 271. 

2 Ibid., vol. v, p. 337. 3 Tbid., vol. v, p. 358. 

4 The folio manuscripts of Miss Elstob’s Homilies are now preserved among 
the Lansdowne Manuscripts in the British Museum. See Bibliothece Lans- 
downiane, nos. 370-74, and Bibliothece Harleiana, vol. 1, p. 323, no. *27. 

5 Hearne’s Collections, vol. vt, p. 255. Mr. Rowe Mores said that Miss 
Elstob had once had a genteel fortune, but that she had “pursued too much 
the drug called learning, and in that pursuit failed of being careful of 
any one thing necessary.” 

§ “The learned Saxonist, Mrs. Elstob, was one, among many others, who 
about this period [1714] experienced the new Bishop’s bounty.”’ (Nichols: 
Illustrations of Literary History, vol. m1, p. 227.) Mr. Thomas Seward, Bishop 


of Lichfield, knew Miss Elstob and was one of the contributors to her sup- 
port. (Nichols: Literary Anecdotes, vol. Iv, p. 135.) 


182 ’ THE LEARNED LADY 


who became acquainted with Miss Elstob and described 
her situation so effectively to one of his customers, a Mrs. 
Chapone, that this lady wrote a circular letter representing 
Miss Elstob’s extensive learning, her service to literature, her 
multiplied distresses, her meekness and patience, and sent it to 
the neighboring gentry. An annuity of twenty guineas was 
raised, and Miss Elstob was enabled to keep an assistant so that 
she could again “‘taste of that food of the mind from which she 
had been so long oblig’d to fast.” 

Another result of Mrs. Chapone’s letter was a possible ap- 
pointment for Miss Elstob as mistress of a charity school kept 
up by Lady Elizabeth Hastings. With regard to this plan Miss 
Elstob wrote the sia very interesting letter to Mr. 
George Ballard: 


Since you desire to know if I have accepted Mrs. Capon’s proposal, I 
do, though I am very sensible it is not commendable to expose a pri- 
vate correspondence, venture to communicate to so good a friend, a 
copy of the worthy gentleman’s letter, sent her in answer to her vastly 
kind recommendation of me, and the charming letter she sent to me. 
In answer to hers, after I had received your answer, I assured her of my 
readiness to serve that excellent lady, as far as lyes in my power. But 
there are some things to be taught in such a school, which I cannot pre- 
tend to: I mean, the two accomplishments of a good housewife, spin- 
ning and knitting. Not that I would be thought to be above doing any 
commendable work proper for my sex; for I have continually in my 
thoughts the glorious character of a virtuous woman, Proverbs 
XxxI, 13; “She seeketh wool and flax, and worketh willingly with her 
hands.” And as an instance of the truth of this, the gown I had on 
when you gave me the favour of a visit was part of it my own spinning, 
and I wear no other stockings but what I knit myself: yet I do not 
think myself proficient enough in these arts to become a teacher of 
them. Asto your objection on the meanness of the scholars, I assure 
you, Sir, I should think it as glorious an employment to instruct those 
poor children, as to teach the children of the greatest. But I must tell 
you that mine may be termed a life of disappointments from my 
cradle till now, nor doI expect any other while I live. This, and hearing 
no more of that affair, makes me think her ladyship is provided with 
a mistress before now, there being many more deserving than myself, 
that are in want of such an employment. Nor do I repine; for I am 
so inured to disappointments, that I expect nothing else, and I receive 


IN ENGLAND FROM 1650 TO 1760 183 


them with as much easiness as others do their greatest prosperity. . . . 
I often compare myself to poor John Tucker, whose Life I read when a 
girl in Winstanley’s Lives of the Poets, which affected me so much 
that I cannot forget it yet. He is there described to have been an 
honest, industrious, poor man, but, notwithstanding his indefatigable 
industry, as the author writes, “no butter would stick on his bread.” 


The Mrs. Chapone who wrote the circular letter concerning 
Miss Elstob was Sarah Kirkham, an intimate girlhood friend 
of Mary Granville, afterward Mrs. Pendarves, but better 
known as Mrs. Delany. Sally Kirkham is described by Mrs. 
Delany as a girl of “extraordinary understanding, lively imag- 
ination, and humane disposition,” of ““uncommon genius and 
intrepid spirit.” In 1725, at the age of twenty-four she married 
the Reverend John Chapone, and they went to live in Stanton, 
Gloucestershire, and little more is heard of her until the writing 
of this letter before 1734. Mrs. Chapone meant the letter for 
the neighboring gentry, but it finally reached a more distin- 
guished audience. Mrs. Pendarves writes: 


I told you in my last I had left Sally’s letter with Mrs. Pointz. 
She gave it to her husband, who desired the Duke to read it to the 
Queen. The Queen was so touched with the letter that she immediately 
sent for Mrs. Pointz, to inquire into some more particulars about the 
person mentioned in it, and the person who wrote it. Mrs. Pointz said 
she knew no more than what the letter told, but that Mrs. Chapone 
was a friend of ours. The Queen said she never in her life reada 
better letter, that it had touched her heart, and ordered immediately 
an hundred pounds for Mrs. Elstob, and said she “need never fear a 
necessitous old age whilst she lived, and that when she wanted more 
to ask for it, and she should have it.” I think this was acting like a 
queen, and ought to be known. ... I hope this may be the means of 
serving our friend Sally, the letter was the whole discourse of the draw- 
ing-room. The Queen asked the Duke “When he should be able to 
write such a letter.”” He answered, honestly, “Never.” Mrs. Pointz has 
asked many particulars about Mr. Chapone, and I did him justice.? 


1 Nichols: Literary Anecdotes. vol. tv, p. 137. 

2 Letters of Mrs. Delany, 1st Series, vol. 1, p. 263. Mrs. Chapone was evi- 
dently a gifted letter-writer and it is with a sense of great loss that we read 
of the accidental burning of many of her letters in 1860. (Letters of Mrs. 
Delaney, 1st Series, vol. 1, p. 263 n.) 


184 THE LEARNED LADY 


Queen Caroline’s interest was so genuinely aroused that she 
not only ordered the £100 to be at once sent to Miss Elstob, 
but promised to repeat the same every five years. This was 
evidently with the idea that she should be taken from the little 
school at Evesham and put into her proper station as “‘mistress 
of a boarding-school for young ladies of a higher rank.”’ Such 
might have been the outcome had not the money lapsed with 
the death of the Queen in 1737. 

All plans for Miss Elstob seemed to end in failure till “‘Sally’s 
historical epistle,” as Mrs. Pendarves called it, was sent to the 
Duchess of Portland at Bulstrode.! The result in this case 
was of permanent value, for Miss Elstob was invited by the 
Duchess to make her home at Bulstrode as instructor of the 
children. Of this appointment Mrs. Pendarves wrote, Decem- 
ber 12, 1738, to her mother: 


The Duchess has now a thousand fears, lest my Lord and Lady Ox- 
ford should have any objections against taking her, but I hope they 
’ will all prove false. ... Mrs. Elstob seems, out of modesty and diffi- 
dence of herself, to decline coming, but it would be most imprudent 
of her to decline such an offer, when no fatigue will be imposed upon 
her, but all imaginable care will be taken of her. I own I long to have 
you see her, that I may really know what sort of woman she is. My 
Lord Oxford objects to her not speaking French, but the Duchess 
answers she shall have a master for that, or a maid to talk, and all she 
requires and hopes of Mrs. Elstob is to instruct her children in the 
principles of religion and virtue, to teach them to speak, read, and 
understand English well, to cultivate their minds as far as their 
capacity will allow, and to keep them company in the house and when 
her health and strength will permit to take the air with them. All this 
she is surely well qualified to do, and it would be a sincere joy to me 
to have our worthy Duchess possest of so valuable a person.” 


Ten days later Mrs. Pendarves wrote again from Bulstrode: 


The Elstobian matter is quite fixed, and she expressed the utmost 
satisfaction at having secured such a worthy woman to educate her 
children; I wrote last post to Mrs. Elstob to tell her that the Duchess 
looked on her as engaged to her, and that her salary should begin on 
Xmas Day next, though she could not conveniently take her into her 
family till Midsummer. I hope she will write to the Duchess, and sup- 


1 Letters of Mrs. Delany, 1st Series, vol. 0, p. 31. 2 Tbid., vol. u, p. 14. 


IN ENGLAND FROM 1650 TO 1760 185 


pose she will of course; I gave her a little hint but would not have it 
mentioned that I did... . I think your advice to Mrs. Elstob quite right 
about paying debts; a person of such principles as hers cannot enjoy any 
advantages without doing that justice when it is in her power to do it.! 

In August, 1739, Miss Elstob was in Evesham and several 
times met her benefactor, Mrs. Chapone, of whom she gives 
a lively picture showing that letter-writing was not Mrs. Cha- 
pone’s only title to fame. Miss Elstob writes: 

The last time she was here, I had an exceeding pleasure, though not 
without some concern, at hearing a long and warm dispute between 
that charming woman, and Mr. Ben Seward, on some methodistical 
notions, in which it was by better judges than myself agreed that the 
female antagonist had much the advantage over him.? 


Miss Elstob spent the remaining seventeen years of her life 
with the Duchess of Portland. They were comfortable, lei- 
surely, studious years, a delightful haven after her twenty years 
of hardship, penury, and intellectual starvation. But she was 
fifty-six when she went to Bulstrode, and the ease and security 
of her life there came too late to rouse into life the mental activ- 
ity so long dormant. Miss Elstob’s real life was the twenty 
years with her brother, years of plain living and high aspirations 
while they worked together in the realms of pure scholarship. 
It would be difficult to find a more satisfying example of literary 
comradeship than that offered by the learned young curate and 
the learned young sister, the “dulcis & indefessa comes” of his 
studies.* 


In 1739 Mrs. Elizabeth Blackwell published in two folio 
volumes A Curious Herbal, containing Fwe Hun-  gyizabeth 
dred Cuts, of the most useful Plants, which are Blackwell 
now used in the Practice of Physick, engraved on (2. 1739) 
folio Copper Plates, after Drawings taken from the Life, by 
1 Letters of Mrs. Delany, 1st Series, vol. m1, p. 18. 2 Thid., vol. m1, p. 56. 
3 A full Life of Miss Elstob is much to be desired. In Ballard’s Letters, in 
the Letters of many contemporary antiquaries and Saxon scholars, especially 
Dr. George Hickes, and in manuscripts at Bulstrode, there must be many 


further sources of interesting information concerning her life and work. Espe- 
cially would Mrs. Chapone’s letter be a valuable contribution. 


186 THE LEARNED LADY 


Elizabeth Blackwell. To which is added, a short Description of 
the Plants and their common Uses in Physick. Printed for John 
Nourse at the Lamb without Temple Bar. The first of these 
magnificent volumes is dedicated to the famous Dr. Richard 
Mead, “Physician to Kings,” as the one who first advised the 
publication of the work. The dedication of the second volume is 
to Isaac Rand, an apothecary and Fellow of the Royal Society, 
and Curator of the Botanical Garden at Chelsea, as the one to 
whom she went for assistance in all difficult botanical questions. 
The short descriptions of the plants were taken mainly from 
Mr. Joseph Miller’s Botanicum Offcinale with his consent. She 
lived near the Botanical Garden and made all her drawings 
from life. She also etched them on copper, and colored them 
herself. The book received high recognition. Much of the 
work must have been done by 1735, for on October 1 of that 
year the following testimonial, now one of the title-pages, was 
written: 

We whose names are underwritten, having seen a considerable 
Number of the Drawings from which the Plates are to be engraved, 
and likewise some of the Coloured Plants, think it a Justice done the 


Publick to declare our Satisfaction with them, and our good Opinion 
of the Capacity of the Undertaker. 


R. Mead, M.D. Ia. Douglas, M.D. Joseph Miller 
G. L. Tessier, M.D. James Sherard, M.D. Isaac Rand 
Alexander Stuart, M.D. W. Cheseldon Rob. Nicholls 


This statement was repeated in French and the names again 
signed. 

A further endorsement on the completion of the book was 
dated July 1, 1737. It is as follows: 


Imagines hasce Plantarum Offcinalium per Dominam Elizabetham 
Blackwell delineatas ceri incisas & depictas, vis qui Medicine Operam 
dant, perutiles fore judicamus. 

Thomas Pellet, Prees. 
Henricus Plumptre 
Richardus Tyson C 
Peircuis Dod sage sien 
Gulienius Wasey 


IN ENGLAND FROM 1650 TO 1760 187 


In 1757-73 there was a fine republication of the work in 
Nuremberg with an addition of a hundred plants, and a highly 
laudatory Preface. The work was recognized at once as of 
great practical value because of the accuracy of the drawings 
and the large number of plants represented. The charm of the 
plates is beyond question so far as delicacy of outline and 
beauty of coloring are concerned. They are superior to the 
plates in Darwin’s Botanic Garden, nearly half a century later. 
The Blackwellia race of plants was named after Mrs. Blackwell 
in recognition of her admirable work.! 

Mrs. Blackwell is herself an enigma. She emerges into public 
notice for three years, but her life before and after sinks into 
obscurity. She was said to be “a virtuous gentlewoman, 
daughter of a worthy merchant,” who gave her a handsome 
portion. Her husband was Alexander Blackwell, a printer. 
He was a well-educated and able man, but generally counted 
an adventurer. He at one time entered upon a project of con- 
ducting a printing establishment of his own. His failure in this 
landed him in a debtor’s prison where he was confined several 
years. Mrs. Blackwell’s Herbal was made by her for the purpose 
of securing his release. He is said to have aided her in the for- 
eign terminology and in the abridgments from Miller. When he 
was free her object was accomplished and we hear of no further 
work. It would be interesting to know how she came to have 
so much skill. It would be more interesting to know the psychol- 
ogy of her prompt abandonment of work by which she won both 
fame and money, and in which she took such evident delight.” 


It is to be regretted that so few facts are accessible concerning 
Mrs. Elizabeth Cooper. Her works seem to y,. pyre 
offer interesting points of departure for investi- beth Cooper 
gation into her life and education, but we know “ *735-4°) 
little about her except that her literary ventures belong be- 


1 Allibone’s Dictionary of Authors. 
2 Bruce, James: Lives of Eminent Men of Aberdeen; Chalmer’s Dictionary; 
The Gentleman’s Magazine, vol. xvu; Anecdotes of Bowyer, p. 556. 


188 THE LEARNED LADY 


tween 1735 and 1740. She was the wife of Thomas Cooper,! 
who was either an auctioneer or a book-seller, or possibly both, 
and she was married before 1735. Beyond these meager facts 
our knowledge of her must be gleaned from her books. Appar- 
ently her first literary venture was a comedy. It was entitled 
The Rival Widows; or, the Fair Libertine, and was brought out 
at the Covent Garden Theater in 1735. It had a successful run 
of nine nights. Baker says that “allowing for the too common 
freedom of female dramatists, this is far from a bad comedy.” ? 
Genest, after briefly outlining the play and commenting on 
various passages that seem to him borrowed from preceding 
dramatists, says: ‘It is on the whole a tolerable play, but it 
wants incident sadly.” But he does not agree with Baker as to 
the moral tone of the play, for he says of Lady Bellair, the hero- 
ine, ‘Lady Bellair is gay and extravagant, but of good princi- 
ples at bottom ...it is with much impropriety that she is 
called a Fair Libertine — she is only above vulgar prejudices.” # 
In her preface to the play Mrs. Cooper says that it was de- 
signed “an Offering to the Sex”’ in that the chief character is 
a woman “capable of thinking for herself, and acting on the 
principles of Nature and Truth.” Some indications of the 
characteristics of Lady Bellair may be found in the fact that 
Mrs. Horton was chosen to create the part. Millamant in 
Congreve’s Way of the World, Lady Dainty in Burnaby’s The 
Reform’d Wife, Lady Betty Modish in Cibber’s Careless Husband, 
and Lady Townly in his Provoked Husband, were the parts in 
which Mrs. Horton’s beauty and her elegance of dress and 
manner found their fitting opportunity. Lady Bellair belongs 
evidently to this class of fine lady coquettes, and a further 
point of interest concerning Mrs. Cooper is that on her benefit 
night she herself played the part of Lady Bellair. Either 
Mrs. Cooper had already shown enough ability as an amateur 
actress to warrant her appearance on the stage of one of the 


1 Notes and Queries, 2d Series, vol. x1, p. 101. 
2 Baker: Biographia Dramatica, vol. tv, p. 212. 
3 Genest: Some Account of the English Stage, vol. m1, p. 461. 


IN ENGLAND FROM 1650 TO 1760 189 


leading theaters, or she was well enough known as a writer or 
as a personality to make her presence in the cast a drawing 
ecard. That she could venture on the inevitable comparison 
with Mrs. Horton may indicate some possibilities in the way of 
her own attractive qualities. And it is to be further noted that 
she “unexpectedly and surprizingly” eclipsed Mrs. Horton. 
The Prompter endeavors to explain Mrs. Cooper’s success by 
saying that she “looked” the character and represented with 
great “naturalnes,” the somewhat bold and libertine heroine.! 

Mrs. Cooper’s second dramatic attempt was a tragedy which 
was not successful. It was acted but one night and was never 
printed. 

This theatrical work was, however, only on the fringe of 
Mrs. Cooper’s real interest. In 1737 she published a book en- 
titled The Muses Library; Or, a Series of English Poetry, from the 
Saxons, to the Reign of King Charles II containing, The Lives and 
Characters of all the known Writers in that Interva', the names of 
their Patrons; Complete Episodes, by way of Specimen of the 
larger Pieces, very near the intire works of some, and large Quota- 
tions from others. Being a General Collection of almost all the old 
valuable Poetry extant, now so industriously enquir’d after, tho’ 
rarely to be found, but in the Studies of the Curious, and affording 
Entertainment on all Subjects, Philosophical, Historical, Moral, 
Satyrical, Allegorical, Critical, Heroick, Pastoral, Gallant, Amo- 
rous, Courtly and Sublime. But one volume of this projected work 
was published. The early Georgian public was not trained to 
an interest in the past. Mrs. Cooper suffered the not infre- 
quent fate of pioneers. There was even difficulty in working 
off one edition of the first volume, as is evident from its appear- 
ance in 1738 and 1741 with changed title-pages.2?, That Mrs. 
Cooper expected to publish the second volume, including the 
poets from Samuel Daniel to the time of Charles II, is shown 
not only by the statement in her Preface, but by interesting 
notes in the Diary of William Oldys (1696-1761), the famous 


1 The Genileman’s Magazine, March, 1735. 
2 Lowndes: Bibliographical Manual. 


190 THE LEARNED LADY 


antiquary. In 1736 he was in London employed im seeing 
through the press a new edition of Raleigh’s History of the 
World. His Chambers were in Gray’s Inn and he was fre- 
quently consulted there “‘on obscure and obsolete writers by 
eminent men of letters.” Two of the people in whom he was 
particularly interested were Thomas Hayward, who was com- 
piling his British Muse, and Mrs. Cooper. In his Diary are the 
following records: 

1737, June 22. Mrs. Cooper came to my chambers: said she would 
return Puttenham’s Art of Poesy, Browne’s Pastorals, and Sir Henry 
Wotton, when she had finished her extracts for the second volume of 
her Muses’ Inbrary to be published by Christmas. 

July 4, Monday. Returned Sir T. More’s works: some of his Eng- 
lish poetry therein might be for Mrs. Cooper’s work, or Mr. , Hay- 
wards, on Fortune, etc. 

Aug. 13. Rec’d letter from Mrs. Cooper to borrow old Marlowe’s 
poem of Hero and Leander for the continuation of her Muses’ Library; 
sent by the servant a very scarce collection of old poetry, called The 
Paradise of Dainty Devices, in which are several pieces by the old 
Lord Vaux in King Henry the Eighth’s time, the Earl of Oxford, Sir 
W. Raleigh, Mr. Edwards, Jasper Haywood, Hunis, Churchyard, 
Kinwelmarsh, Lloyd, Whetstone, etc., printed 4°. 1573. To borrow 
one of Caxton’s books of Sir Hans Sloane and remember to apply the 
story of Absyrtus in the preface for Mr. Hayward’s Collection of select 
thoughts from our old poets.! 


Mrs. Cooper frequently comments on the difficulty and ex- 
pense of gathering material for her enterprise and gratefully 
acknowledges “the generous Assistance of the Candid Mr. 
Oldys.”” Biographical data were also obtained only through 
most patient effort. The only Lives of the Poets to which she 
could have access were Wood’s Athene Oxoniensis and the 
works of Phillips, Winstanley, and Jacob. Edward Phillips’s 
Theatrum Poetarum appeared in 1675. Its first volume gave 
brief biographical and critical notes on sixty-four authors from 
Robert of Gloucester to George Chapman, thus covering about 
the same ground as Mrs. Cooper’s first. volume which closes 
with Samuel Daniel. William Winstanley’s Lives of the English 

1 Notes and Queries, 2d Series, vol. x1, pp. 101-02. 


IN ENGLAND FROM 1650 TO 1760 191 


Poets was published in 1687. It includes notes on poets from 
William the Conqueror to James II with occasional brief illus- 
trative extracts. The Poetical Register of Giles Jacob (1724) is, 
in the first volume, confined to dramatists and is based on 
Langbain. The second volume, The Lives and Characters of the 
English Poets, extends about a century and a quarter later than 
Mrs. Cooper’s volume. In the period before 1600 about half 
the names in her volume are included and briefly commented 
on. Jacob also gives an occasiona! extract. 

Mrs. Cooper was not, then, without predecessors in her un- 
dertaking. The novelty in her book was her assumption that 
people would not only like to know about the old poets, but 
that there would be many lovers of literature who would re- 
joice in reading the old poems, and very nearly in their original 
antiquated form. She gives ten pages from Langland, eleven 
from Barclay, twenty-eight from Sackville, twenty-four from 
Churchyard, thirty-five from Fulke Greville, thirty-one from 
Fairfax, and so on. Chaucer, Spenser, and Shakespeare are less 
fully represented, as being already well known. The selections 
are the result of wide reading and are made because they 
pleased Mrs. Cooper’s own taste. “What has given me Plea- 
sure in my Closet,”’ she says, “I have undertaken to recommend 
to the Publick; not presuming to inform the Judgment, but 
only awaken the Attention.”’ That she failed to “awaken 
Attention” was the fault of the age. Her selections were repre- 
sentative and interesting. 

Mrs. Cooper’s book shows not only wide research and a full 
knowledge of extant criticism, but it also manifests a personal 
zest in reading and an unusual independence of literary judg- 
ment. This independence is shown in her choice of authors. 
Phillips, Winstanley, and Jacob had omitted Langland, but she 
says, “In my Judgment, no Writer, except Chaucer, and 
Spenser, for many Ages, had more of real Inspiration.” Or take 
the case of Lydgate. Phillips mentions him, but not, appar- 
ently, from any personal knowledge of his work. Winstanley 
and Jacob praise him highly. Mrs. Cooper says of him: “Many 


192 THE LEARNED LADY 


Authors are so profuse in his Praise as to rank him very little 
below his Master, and, often, quote them together; which 
rais’d my Curiosity so high, that I gave a considerable Price for 
his Works, and waded thro’ a large Folio, hoping still to have 
my Expectation gratified. ... But I must, either confess my 
own want of Penetration, or beg leave to dissent from his 
Admirers.” She gives a long quotation from Lord Brook’s 
A Treatise of Humane Learning, because his name has “‘never 
yet received the Honours it deserved.” She is indignant at the 
general indifference to the work and fame of Edward Fairfax 
and writes a eulogy of several pages. Her comments on 
Chaucer, Spenser, and Shakespeare are brief, since all agree on 
their preéminence. Mr. Lounsbury, after noting one or two 
errors in the book, says of it: “I know of no similar work pro- 
duced at that period in which the knowledge displayed is so 
accurate and comprehensive, or the critical estimates so uni- 
formly good and just. There was exhibited in it not merely 
freshness of judgment but the independence that springs from 
the study of writers at first hand.” 1 Mrs. Cooper had in her 
the making of a scholar. She allowed herself no generalities. 
Whatever she said was based on a thorough study of the ma- 
terial under discussion. Furthermore, she acquainted herself 
with all extant critical opinion without thereby losing the 
power to form an opinion of her own. 

Mrs. Cooper’s Preface is an excellent, even an eloquent, piece 
of writing, in justification of poets as a nation’s glory. She 
recognizes that “‘ Merit is not its own Preservative” and wishes 
in her book to set up if possible “a Bulwark which shall pre- 
serve Merit from the attacks of Time.” She considers her 
“SERIES OF Portry (which has never been aim’d at anywhere 
else) ... one of the most valuable collections that ever was 
made publick.” She has no apologies to make. In introducing 
to the moderns this august company of ancient poets she is 
saved from any possible self-consciousness by the dignity of 
her enterprise. The same tone pervades her Dedication. No 

1 Lounsbury: Studies in Chaucer, vol. 11, p. 242. 


IN ENGLAND FROM 1650 TO 1760 193 


single name is glorious enough to appear at the head of her list. 
She chooses rather a dedication to ‘“‘the truly Honourable So- 
ciety for the Encouragement of Learning.” ! That Society was 
then in the hey-day of its brief glory. Mrs. Cooper had, appar- 
ently, no thought of personally benefiting by her Dedications. 
On the contrary she counted this an opportunity to express 
what all authors and lovers of literature must feel towards a 
design “‘so great, seasonable, and humane”’ as that of this new 
organization, a design applauded by “all who have Generosity, 
Benevolence or Politeness.” 

As dramatist and actress Mrs. Cooper would deserve at least 
passing mention, but as a scholar, as an ardent advocate of 
early English poetry, she must take high rank, not only among 
the learned women, but also among the learned men of her day. 


No woman of the first half of the eighteenth century had 
a more active mind or facile pen than Lady yay Mary 
Mary Wortley Montagu. Although almost Wortley Montagu 
none of her work appeared in print in her life- eeBo-ne2) 
time, her personality made its own way, and she was early rec- 
ognized as of note for genius and learned acquirements. It is, 
therefore, of especial interest to inquire into the particulars of 
her education, and to find out her status as a woman of letters. 

The materials for such an inquiry are fairly abundant, and 
are mainly: her miscellaneous letters, first published in 1803; 
a fragmentary autobiographical romance, of which she says 
“not a sillable” except the names is feigned; and the Intro- 
ductory Anecdotes by her granddaughter, Lady Louisa Stuart,? 

1 The statutes of this Society were dated May 27, 1736. In December Mr. 
Alex. Gordon wrote, “We are every day increasing both in number and in 
members either conspicuous for their quality or station, or learning and ingenu- 
ity.” But constant difficulties arose between the Society and book-sellers. 
No plan tried proved satisfactory to both parties. By 1765 the finances of the 
Society were practically exhausted, and in April, 1746, the Society came to an 
abrupt close, after a starving and not very productive ten years. (Nichols: 
Anecdotes of Bowyer, pp. 134-38.) 


2 Miss Emily M. Symonds says of the author of the Anecdotes: “‘Lady Testis 
Stuart inherited her grandmother’s tastes for literary pursuits. That this taste 


194 THE LEARNED LADY 


included in Lady Mary’s Letters and Works brought out by 
Lord Wharncliffe, her great-grandson, in 1887. The important 
groups of letters containing personal details are those written 
to Mr. Montagu from about 1709 till their marriage in 1712, 
and the very large group to her family and friends, chiefly to 
Lady Bute, her daughter, during Lady Mary’s stay in Italy 
from 1739 to1761. 

Lady Mary’s mother died when she was eight, and her father, 
too much a man of pleasure to trouble himself with the educa- 
tion of girls, gave his three young daughters into the care of 
“an old governess, who, though perfectly good and pious, 
wanted a capacity for so great a trust.” + In commenting on 
the evil effects of an ignorant education, Lady Mary said: 
‘* My own was the worst in the world, being exactly the same as 


was discouraged by her family is a real calamity, as all will agree who are familiar 
with the Selections from her Manuscripts (Essays and Verses), and the Letters 
to Miss Clinton. Her sketch of the family of John, Duke of Argyll, is a biograph- 
ical gem, and her youthful letters read as if they had been written by one of 
Jane Austen’s most charming heroines. Her satire is so sweet-tempered that 
it is evident she likes her victims none the less for her laughter, while her 
common-sense philosophy, with its sub-acid flavour of gentle cynicism may 
be studied with advantage even in these enlightened days. A glimpse of Lady 
Mary’s daughter and granddaughter may be obtained from the Diary of Miss 
Burney, who met the two ladies at Mrs. Delany’s in 1787. Lady Bute, she 
records, with an exterior the most forbidding to strangers, has powers of con- 
versation the most entertaining and lively where she is intimate. She is full 
of anecdote, delights in strokes of general satire, yet with mere love of comic, 
not insidious ridicule. She spares not for giving her opinions, and laughs at 
fools as well as follies, with the shrewdest derision. Lady Louisa Stuart, her 
youngest daughter, has parts equal to those of her mother, with a deportment 
and appearance infinitely more pleasing; yet she is far from handsome, but 
proves how well beauty may be occasionally missed, when understanding and 
vivacity unite to fill up her place. ... They seem both to inherit an ample 
portion of the wit of their mother and grandmother, Lady Mary Wortley 
Montagu, though I believe them both to have escaped all inheritance of her 
faults. On the occasion of another and later meeting Miss Burney writes: 
“Lady Bute and Lady Louisa were both in such high spirits themselves, that 
they kept up all the conversation between them with such a vivacity, an acute- 
ness, and an observation on men and manners so clear and so sagacious, that 
it would be difficult to pass an evening of greater entertainment.’”’ (Symonds, 
Emily Morse: Lady Mary Wortley Montagu and Her Times, p. 537.) 

1 Symonds, Emily Morse: Lady Mary Wortley Montagu and Her Times, 
p. 4. 


IN ENGLAND FROM 1650 TO 1760 195 


Clarissa Harlowe’s; her pious Mrs. Norton so perfectly resem- 
bling my governess, who had been nurse to my mother. I could 
almost fancy the author was acquainted with her. She took so 
much pains from my infancy, to fill my head with superstitious 
tales and false notions, it was none of her fault I am not at this 
day afraid of witches and hobgoblins, or turned methodist.” ! 
But at least there were no hindering home influences, and Lady 
Mary had what Charles Lamb would call the luck to be “tum- 
bled early into a closet of good old English books.” Forsaking 
the dolls of her sisters she took refuge in her father’s fine library 
and there she read with the absorption of a youthful Coleridge. 
She “got by heart all the poetry that came in her way,” 
and she “read every romance as yet invented.” Lady Louisa 
says she “possessed and left after her, the whole library of 
Mrs. Lenox’s Female Quixote —Cleopatra, Cassandra, Clelia, 
Cyrus, Pharamond, Ibrahim, etc., etc. — all, like the lady 
Arabella’s collection, ‘ Englished,’ mostly, “by persons of honour.’ 
The chief favourite appeared to have been a translation of 
Monsieur Honoré d’Urfé’s Astrea, once the delight of Henri 
Quaire and his court, and still admired and quoted by the 
savans who flourished under Louis XIV. In a blank page of this 
massive volume (which might have counterbalanced a pig of 
lead of the same size) Lady Mary had written in her fairest 
youthful hand the names and characteristic qualities of the 
chief personages thus: — the beautiful Diana, the volatile 
Climene, the melancholy Doris, Celedon the faithful, Adamas 
the wise, and so on; forming two long columns.” 2? Among 


1 The Letters and Works of Lady Mary Wortley Montagu (Bell, 1887), vol. 1, 
p. 240. 

2 Ibid., uxxv1. Lady Louisa gives the later history of these ponderous black 
books saying that they survived the wear and tear of a century through the 
protection of an excellent person who had been Lady Bute’s attendant before 
her marriage, and a part of the family ever after. “Her spectacles were al- 
ways to be found in Clelia and Cassandra, which she studied unceasingly six 
days of the week, prizing them next to the Bible and Tillotson’s Sermons; be- 
cause, to give her own words, they were all about good and virtuous people, 
not like the wicked trash she now saw young people get from the circulating 
libraries.” 


196 THE LEARNED LADY 


Lady Mary’s earliest attempts at authorship were romantic 
stories in imitation of these her favorite authors. 

But along with her romances, and soon superseding them, 
were sterner studies. She early began to teach herself Latin. 
In her account of herself under the name Letitia, she said: 

Her appetite for knowledge increasing with her years, without con- 
sidering the toilsome task she undertook, she began to learn herself 
the Latin grammar, and with the help of an uncommon memory and 
indefatigable labour, made herself so far mistress of that language as 
to be able to understand almost any author. This extraordinary 
attachment to study became the theme of public discourse. Her 
Father, though no scholar himself, was flattered with a pleasure in the 
progress she made, and this reputation which she did not seek (having 
no end in view but her own amusement) gave her enviers and con- 
sequently enemies among the girls of her own age. 


Lady Mary was but fourteen when her “ just and knowing” 
criticism of a play, her knowledge of Latin, and her relish for 
the classics, excited the wonder and admiration of Mr. Wortley 
Montagu. He was as amazed “as if he had heard a piece of 
wax work talk.” ! But the envy of her girl companions and 
the liberal praise of Mr. Wortley are not the only proofs that 
Lady Mary’s shining talents and learned tastes met early rec- 
ognition. Her uncle, Mr. William Fielding, “perceived her 
capacity, corresponded with her, and encouraged her pursuit of 
information.” Bishop Burnet showed himself most friendly, 
and condescended to direct her studies. Mr. Wortley also kept 
up a kind of scholarly guidance. Lady Mary said to Spence in 
Rome in 1741: “When I was young I was a great admirer of 
Ovid’s Metamorphoses, and that was one of the chief reasons 
that set me upon the thoughts of stealing the Latin language. 
Mr. Wortley was the only person to whom I communicated my 
design, and he encouraged me in it. I used to study five or six 
hours a day for two years in my father’s library; and so got 
that language, whilst everybody else thought I was reading 
nothing but novels and romances.” 2 By the time she was 


1 Symonds: Lady Mary Wortley Montagu and Her Times, p. 7. 
2 Spence’s Anecdotes, by Singer (Ed. 1820), p. 232. 


IN ENGLAND FROM 1650 TO 1760 197 


twenty Italian had been added to her accomplishments. In 
an early undated letter to Mrs. Hewet she wrote: “I have be- 
gun to learn Italian, and am much mortified I cannot do it of 
a signor of Monsieur Resingade’s recommendation; but ’tis 
always the fate of women to obey, and my papa has promised 
me to a Mr. Cassotti. I am afraid I shall never understand it 
as well as you do.” By 1710 she was quoting Italian verse, and 
in the following year she corresponded with Mr. Resingade in 
Italian. That she was still working under Mr. Cassotti in 
1712 is apparent from her request that Mr. Wortley should 
send one of his letters to her under the care of Mr. Cassotti, her 
“Ttalian master.” At this period, or a little later, she also 
learned French, so that she wrote letters and essays in that 
language. Her continued devotion to study is shown by a letter 
from Thoresby to Anne Wortley in 1709: “I am nowso much 
alone, I have leisure to pass whole days in reading... . My 
study is nothing but dictionaries and grammars. I am trying 
whether it be possible to learn without a master; I am not cer- 
tain (and dare hardly hope) I shall make any great progress; 
but I find the study so diverting. I am not only easy, but 
pleased with the solitude that indulges it.”! 

Lady Mary’s diligence resulted in 1710 in a translation of the 
Latin version of the Enchiridion of Epictetus which she sent to 
Bishop Burnet with a notable letter. Of the translation she 
says: “Here is the work of one week of my solitude — by the . 
many faults in it your lordship will easily believe I spent no 
more time upon it; it was hardly finished when I was obliged to 
begin my journey, and I had not leisure to write it over again. 
You have it here without any corrections with all its blots and 
errors.” Bishop Burnet returned the document with emenda- 
tions which in the present printed form are given in italics.? _In 
spite of the numerous changes suggested as closer to the original, 
the translation remains as a remarkable production for a self- 
educated girl of twenty. Even more remarkable as evidencing 
maturity of thought and command of an admirable English 

1 Montagu, Lady Mary: Works, vol. 1, p. 40. 2 Ibid., vol. u, p. 403. 


198 ' ‘THE LEARNED LADY 


style is the letter, which is of particular significance in connec- 
tion with the contemporary attitude towards the learned woman: 


My sex is usually forbid studies of this nature, and folly reckoned 
so much our proper sphere, we are sooner pardoned any excesses of 
that; than the least pretensions to reading or good sense. We are per- 
mitted no books but such as tend to the weakening and effeminating 
of the mind. Our natural defects are every way indulged, and it is 
looked upon as in a degree criminal to improve our reason, or fancy 
we have any. We are taught to place all our art in adorning our out- 
ward forms, and permitted, without reproach, to carry that custom 
even to extravagancy, while our minds are entirely neglected, and, 
by disuse of reflections, filled with nothing but the trifling objects our 
eyes are daily entertained with. This custom, so long established and 
industriously upheld, makes it even ridiculous to go out of the com- 
mon road, and forces one to find as many excuses as if it was a thing 
altogether criminal not to play the fool in concert with other women 
of quality, whose birth and leisure only serve to render them the most 
useless and most worthless part of the creation. There is hardly a 
character in the world more despicable, or more liable to universal 
ridicule, than that of a learned woman: those words imply, according 
to the received sense, a tattling, impertinent, vain, and conceited 
creature. I believe nobody will deny that learning may have this 
effect, but it must be a very superficial degree of it. Erasmus was 
certainly a man of great learning and good sense, and he seems to have 
my opinion of it when he says, Famina qui (sic) vere sapit, non videtur 
sibi sapere; contra, que cum nihil sapiat sibi videtur sapere ea demum 
bis stulta est. The Abbé Bellegarde gives a right reason for women’s 
talking overmuch: they know nothing, and every outward object 
strikes their imagination, and produces a multitude of thoughts, which, 
if they knew more, they would know not worth their thinking of. Iam 
not now arguing for an equality of the two sexes. I do not doubt God 
and nature have thrown us into an inferior rank; we are a lower part 
of the creation, we owe obedience and submission to the superior sex, 
and any woman who suffers her vanity and folly to deny this, rebels 
against the law of the Creator, and indisputable order of nature: 
but there is a worse effect than this, which follows the careless educa- 
tion given to women of quality, its being so easy for any man of sense, 
that finds it either his interest or his pleasure, to corrupt them.* 


In 1712 Lady Mary married Mr. Wortley Montagu, in 1713 
her son was born, and in 1715 she started with her husband on 
1 Montagu, Lady Mary: Works, vol. u, p. 5. 


IN ENGLAND FROM 1650 TO 1760 199 


their journey to Turkey. The six years between the Enchiridion 
and the Embassy present Lady Mary to us in an enviable posi- 
tion. The reputation of her youth was augmented. “The 
wittiest as well as one of the most beautiful women of her day, 
she numbered among her admirers the most powerful of the 
statesmen, and the most brilliant of the littérateurs; while, for 
a time at least she was a favourite at the rival Courts of the 
King and the Prince of Wales.” ! The only literary output of 
this period is a long, rather stilted and perfunctory criticism of 
Addison’s Cato which she undertook at her husband’s request,? 
and some Court Poems which she wrote with great zest, in con- 
junction with Pope and Gay, in pursuance of Gay’s plan to 
ridicule the pastoral by keeping the form, but making it the 
vehicle of corrupt court and town life. Of the seven poems so 
written four were by Lady Mary. In them we come for the 
first time on her power of combining picturesque detail and 
caustic comment. Not Gay himself was richer in local color; 
and Pope and Swift were almost equaled in contemptuous social 
portraiture. 

During the six years before the Embassy Lady Mary’s 
activities were essentially those of a social leader and the mis- 
tress of a household. But all her interests were focused to one 
point when she found that she could go to Turkey with Mr. 
Montagu. Travel “is the thing on earth I most wish,” she had 
written in 1710, and now that her husband was sent as Ambas- 
sador to the Porte, her dreams could be realized. She must have 
been a perfect traveling companion. She had great courage, 
great endurance; no hardships or dangers daunted her. During 
the fifteen months of their absence she had her three-year-old 
son to care for, and her daughter was born while they were in 
Constantinople, but nothing interfered with her zest for experi- 
ences. Each day was a new adventure. Each day her insa- 
tiable desire to learn and to know some new thing received 


1 Symonds, Emily Morse: Lady Mary Wortley Montagu and Her Times, 
p- 201. 
2 Thid., p. 169. 


200 THE LEARNED LADY 


some new satisfaction. During the journey she kept a full diary 
which, though not published till after her death, became known 
in manuscript soon after her return. Certainly by 1725 she 
had prepared a copy with an eye to publication. To this manu- 
script Mary Astell wrote a Preface, signed “‘M. A.,” and dated 
1725. Mary Astell was twenty-two years older than Lady 
Mary for whom she had a strong personal affection, as well as 
a very sincere pride in her reputation as a learned woman. 
The Preface would seem to indicate that Lady Mary’s “en- 
viers” and “enemies” had not decreased since her girlhood 
days: 

In short [says Mary Astell] let her own sex, at least, do her justice; 
lay aside diabolical Envy, and its brother Malice, with all their ac- 
cursed company, sly whispering, cruel backbiting, spiteful detraction, 
and the rest of that hideous crew, which, I hope, are very falsely said 
to attend the Tea-Table, being more apt to think they attend those 
public places where virtuous women never come. Let the men malign 
one another, if they think fit, and strive to pull down merit, when they 
cannot equal it. Let us be better-natured, than to give way to any 
unkind or disrespectful thought of so bright an ornament of our sex 
merely because she has better sense; for I doubt not but our hearts 
will tell us, that this is the real and unpardonable offense, whatever 
may be pretended. Let us be better Christians, than to look upon her 
with an evil eye, only because the Giver of all good gifts has entrusted 
and adorned her with the most excellent talents. Rather let us freely 
own the superiority of this sublime genius, as I do in the sincerity of 
my soul, pleased that a woman triumphs, and proud to follow in her 
train. Let us offer her the palm which is so justly her due; and if we 
pretend to any laurels, lay them willingly at her feet. 


After Lady Mary’s return to England in 1718 we come upon 
a long period of quiescence. Domestic affairs, events of social 
and political life, her friendships and hatreds, her economies 
and stock speculations, completely occupied her. During the 
first part of this period she was extravagantly praised. Steele 
said of her in his essay on Inoculation: 

This ornament of her Sex and Country, who ennobles her own Nobil- 


ity by her Learning, Wit and Virtues, accompanying her consort into 
Turkey, observed the Benefit of this Practice, with its frequency, even 


IN ENGLAND FROM 1650 TO 1760 201 


among these obstinate Predestinarians, and brought it over for the 
service and safety of her native England, where she consecrated its 
first effects on the persons of her own fine children. 


In 1720 Pope wrote 


In beauty and wit 
No Mortal as yet 
To question your empire has dared: 
But men of discerning 
Have thought that in learning 
To yield to a lady was hard. 


Impertinent schools, 
With musty dull rules, 
Have reading to females denied; 
So Papists refuse 
The Bible to use, 
Lest flocks should be wise as their guide. 


But if the first Eve 
Hard doom did receive 
When only one apple had she, 
What a punishment new 
Shall be found out for you, 
Who, tasting, have robbed the whole tree. 


And in 1727 he wrote in Sandys’ Ghost: 


Ye ladies, too, draw forth your pen, 
I pray where can the hurt lie? 

Since you have brains as well as men, 
As witness Lady Wortley. 


Before 1724 Dr. Young had sent her his tragedy The Brothers, 
requesting her criticism. In 1725 Richard Savage dedicated 
his Miscellanies to her as one through whose elevated and im- 
mortal wit England had been honored, and who had firmly 
established the fact that women have “strength of mind in 
proportion to their sweetness.” And Henry Fielding, her sec- 
ond cousin, sent her his comedies, “exceedingly anxious” for 
her opinion of them. 


202 THE LEARNED LADY 


But after 1724 or 1725 the years seem to slip on in an aimless 
fashion, the only breaks in the monotony coming from the in- 
termittently virulent quarrels with Pope, the religious and 
medical animosities roused by the inoculation process, family 
sorrows and family discords, with no literary output to mark 
any personal achievements. From thirty to fifty should have 
been harvest years after so brilliant a beginning. But the 
early promise faded into a middle age disillusioned, unambi- 
tious, and rather commonplace. The only writing of any im- 
portance was in the correspondence kept up in a desultory 
fashion with various friends. Such of the letters of this period as 
have been preserved are so vivid and picturesque, so witty, and 
so pleasantly caustic in their comment, that we can only regret 
their small number. Take for instance the following description 
of a feminine riot in the House of Commons: 


At the last warm debate in the House of Lords, it was unanimously 
resolved there should be no crowd of unnecessary auditors; conse- 
quently the fair sex were excluded, and the gallery destined to the sole 
use of the House of Commons. Notwithstanding which determination, 
a tribe of dames resolved to show on this occasion that neither men 
nor laws could resist them. These heroines were Lady Huntington, 
the Duchess of Queensberry, the Duchess of Ancaster, Lady West- 
moreland, Lady Cobham, Lady Charlotte Edwin, Lady Archibald 
Hamilton, and her daughter, Mrs. Scott, and Mrs. Pendarves, and 
Lady Frances Saunderson. I am thus particular in their names, since 
T look upon them to be the boldest asserters, and most resigned suffer- 
ers for liberty, I ever read of. They presented themselves at the door 
at nine o’clock in the morning, where Sir William Saunderson respect- 
fully informed them the Chancellor had made an order against their 
admittance. The Duchess of Queensberry, as head of the squadron, 
pished at the ill-breeding of a mere lawyer, and desired him to let 
them upstairs privately. After some modest refusals, he swore by 
G— he would not let them in. Her grace, with a noble warmth, 
answered, by G—— they would come in in spite of the Chancellor 
and the whole House. This being reported, the Peers resolved to 
starve them out; an order was made that the doors should not be 
opened till they had raised their siege. These Amazons now showed 
themselves qualified for the duty even of foot soldiers; they stood 
there till five in the afternoon, without either sustenance or evacua- 
tion, every now and then playing volleys of thumps, kicks, and raps 


IN ENGLAND FROM 1650 TO 1760 203 


against the door, with so much violence that the speakers in the 
House were scarce heard. When the Lords were not to be conquered 
by this, the two duchesses (very well apprised of the use of stratagems 
in war) commanded a dead silence of half an hour; and the Chancellor, 
who thought this a certain proof of their absence (the Commons also 
- being very impatient to enter), gave order for the opening of the door; 
upon which they all rushed in, pushed aside their competitors, and 
placed themselves in the front rows of the gallery. They stayed there 
till after eleven, when the House rose; and during the debate gave 
applause and showed marks of dislike, not only by smiles and winks 
(which have always been allowed in these cases), but by noisy laughs 
and apparent contempts; which is supposed the true reason why poor 
Lord Hervey spoke miserably.! 


1 Letters and Works, vol. u, p. 41. The debate referred to was on the con- 
duct of the Spanish government, and took place on Thursday, March 1, 1739. 
Mrs. Pendarves, afterwards Mrs. Delany, gives the following slightly different 
account of the matter: “Lady Westmoreland . . . and the Duchess of Queens- 
berry, Mrs. Fortescue and myself, set forward for Westminster, and got up to 
the gallery door without any difficulty. There were thirteen ladies more that 
came with the same intention. To tell you all the particulars of our provoca- 
tions, the insults of the doorkeepers and our unshaken intrepidity, would flour- 
ish out more paper than a single frank would contain; but we bore the buffets 
of a stinking crowd from half an hour after ten till five in the afternoon without 
moving an inch from our places, orly see-sawing about as the motion of the 
multitude forced us. At last, our committee resolved to adjourn to the coffee- 
house of the Court of Request, where debates began how we were to proceed? 
It was agreed amongst us to address Sir Charles Dalton (gentleman usher of 
the Black Rod) for admittance. The address was presented, and an answer 
returned that whilst one lady remained in the passage to the gallery, the door 
should not be opened for the members of the House of Commons, so we gener- 
ously gave them the liberty of taking their places. As soon as the door was 
opened, they all rushed in, and we followed.” 

It is of interest to compare the events of this attack on the House of Lords 
with two similar attempts to affect legislative action in the seventeenth century. 
In 1643, when some peace propositions had been under consideration in the 
House of Commons, but had been finally abandoned, the women of London, 
with white silk ribbons in their hats, went in great numbers to the House bear- 
ing a peace petition. The House sent out a deputation of three or four mem- 
bers to meet them, mollify them, and induce them to return home. Rushworth 
recounts the further progress of the affair: 

“But the women, not satisfied, remain’d thereabouts, and by noon were en- 
creased to five thousand at the least; and some men of the rabble in women’s 
cloaths mixt themselves amongst them and instigated them to go to the Com- 
mons door and cry ‘Peace, Peace,’ which they did accordingly, thrusting to the 
door of the House at the upper stairs head; and as soon as they were pass’d a 


204 THE LEARNED LADY 


In 1739 Lady Mary drifted, without settled plan, to Italy, 
and there her self-elected exile lengthened itself insensibly 
into a habit of absence, so that she did not return to England 
till 1761, the year before her death. During this period she kept 
a full journal, and projected other work, but brought nothing- 
to fruition. Her chief occupation was reading. Her voracious 
appetite for fiction passed over from her girlhood absorption 
in French romances to the novels crowding the presses of the 
mid-eighteenth century. The events of her placid life were 
boxes of books from England, and the novels she read would 
make an adequate list even for Polly Honeycomb. Lady Or- 
ford said she wondered how any one could find pleasure in the 
books Lady Mary chose. But Lady Mary confessed herself 
“a rake in reading,” and said, in 1750: “I thank God my taste 
still continues for the gay part of reading. Wiser people may 
think it trifling but it serves to sweeten life to me.” 2 In 1752 
her daughter sent her Peregrine Pickle (1751), Lady Vane’s 
Memorrs (1750), The Fortunate Parish Girl (1750), Pompey the 
Intile (1751), Eleanora’s Adventures (1751) and the Life of Mrs. 


part of the Trained Band (that usually stood sentinal there) thrust the soldiers 
down and would suffer none to come in or go out of the House for near two 
hours. The Trained Band advised them to come down, and first pulled them; 
and, afterwards to fright them shot powder. But they cry’d out ‘Nothing but 
powder,’ and having brickbats in the yard threw them apace at the Trained 
Band, who then shot bullets, and killed a ballad-singer with one arm that was 
heartening on the women, and another poor man that came accidentally. Yet 
the women not daunted, cry’d out the louder at the door of the House of Com- 
mons, ‘Give us these traitors that are against peace that we may tear them to 
pieces, give us that dog Pym.’ ” 

This “‘ Female Riot” had a disastrous end. When Waller’s troopers went by 
with his colors in their hats, the women snatched some of the ribbons, calling 
the men Waller’s dogs. The troopers defended themselves, at first with swords 
“flatways,” but later cutting so furiously over hands and faces that most of 
the women fled. The few who remained were later dispersed by a troop of 
horses. 

1 On her return she brought nineteen volumes of this journal which she 
entrusted to her daughter. Lady Bute kept them under lock and key, occa- 
sionally reading passages from them, and once allowing her daughter, Lady 
Louisa, to read the first portions. Before Lady Bute’s death the manuscript 
was solemnly burned as a sacred duty to her mother’s memory. 

2 Montagu, Lady Mary: Works, vol. 1, p. 211 n. 


IN ENGLAND FROM 1650 TO 1760 205 


Constantia Philips, as among the interesting new books. In 
a letter to Lady Bute Lady Mary wrote: 


I see in the newspapers the names of the following books: Fortunate 
Mistress, Accomplished Rake, Mrs. Charke’s Memoirs, Modern Lov- 
ers, History of Two Orphans, Memoirs of David Ranger, Miss [Mos]- 
tyn, Dick Hazard, History of a Lady Platonist, Sophia Shakespear, 
Jasper Banks, Frank Hammond, Sir Andrew Thompson, Van a Cler- 
gyman’s Son, Cleanthes and Celimena. I do not doubt at least the 
greatest part of these are trash, lumber, etc.; however, they will serve 
to pass away the idle time, if you will be so kind to send them to your 
most affectionate mother.! 


And she read English drama from Gammer Gurton’s Needle to 
Lillo’s George Barnwell, her prime favorite.” 

. During the twenty-two years in Italy Lady Mary was prac- 
tically alone, but she says time never hung heavy on her hands. 
She wrote letters constantly, and her interest never flagged in 
the affairs of England in general and of Lady Bute’s family in 
particular. As the daughters grew up, Lady Mary wrote often 
about their education, and we see that the ideas of the letter 
to Bishop Burnet persist. In 1753 she wrote concerning Lady 
Mary, the eldest granddaughter, who had shown herself excel- 
lent in arithmetic: 


Learning, if she has a real taste for it, will not only make her con- 
tented, but happy in it. No entertainment is so cheap as reading, nor 
any pleasure so lasting. She will not want new fashions, nor regret the 
loss of expensive diversions, or variety of company, if she can be 
amused with an author in her closet. To render this amusement ex- 
tensive, she should be permitted to learn the languages. I have heard 
it lamented that boys lose so many years in mere learning of words: 
this is no objection to a girl, whose time is not so precious: she cannot 
advance herself in any profession, and has therefore more hours to 
spare; and as you say her memory is good, she will be very agreeably 
employed in this way. There are two cautions to be given on this sub- 
ject: first, not to think herself learned when she can read Latin, or even 
Greek. Languages are more properly to be called vehicles of learning 
than learning itself, as may be observed in many schoolmasters, who, 
though perhaps critics in grammar, are the most ignorant fellows on 


1 Montagu, Lady Mary: Works, vol. u, p. 314. 2 Thid., vol. 1, p. cxxvil. 


206 THE LEARNED LADY 


earth. True knowledge consists in knowing things, not words. I 
would wish her no further a linguist than to enable her to read books 
in their originals, that are often corrupted, and always injured by 
translations. Two hours application every morning will bring this 
about much sooner than you can imagine, and she will have leisure 
enough besides to run over the English poetry, which is a more impor- 
tant part of a woman’s education than it is generally supposed... . 
Tf she has the same inclination (I should say passion) for learning that 
I was born with, history, geography, and philosophy will furnish her 
with materials to pass away cheerfully a longer life than is allotted to 
mortals. I believe there are few heads capable of making Sir I. New- 
ton’s calculations, but the result of them is not difficult to be under- 
stood by a moderate capacity. Do not fear this should make her affect 
the character of Lady , of Lady , or Mrs. : These women 
are ridiculous, not because they have learning, but because they have 
it not. One thinks herself a complete historian, after reading Echard’s 
Roman History; another a profound philosopher, having got by heart 
some of Pope’s unintelligible essays; and a third an able divine, on the 
strength of Whitfield’s sermons: thus you hear them screaming politics 
and controversy.! 


In the next letter Lady Mary shows some doubt as to the 
wisdom of giving advice so outspoken on the subject of learn- 
ing. She says: 


I cannot help writing a sort of apology for my last letter, foreseeing 
that you will think it wrong, or at least Lord Bute will be extremely 
shocked at the proposal of a learned education for daughters, which 
the generality of men believe as great a profanation as the clergy would 
do if the laity should-presume to exercise the functions of the priest- 
hood. I desire you would take notice, I would not have learning en- 
joined them as a task, but permitted as a pleasure, if their genius leads 
them naturally to it.? 


Later in the same letter she says: 


There is nothing so like the education of a woman of quality as that 
of a prince: they are taught to dance, and the exterior part of what is 
called good breeding, which, if they attain, they are extraordinary 
creatures in their kind, and have all the accomplishments required by 
their directors. The same characters are formed by the same lessons, 
which inclines me to think (if I dare say it) that nature has not placed 
us in an inferior rank to men, no more than the females of other ani- 


1 Montagu, Lady Mary: Works, vol. u, p. 236. 2 Ibid., vol. u, p. 239. 


IN ENGLAND FROM 1650 TO 1760 207 


mals, where we see no distinction of capacity; though, I am persuaded, 
if there was a commonwealth of rational horses (as Doctor Swift has 
supposed), it would be an established maxim among them, that a 
mare could not be taught to pace. 


In October of the same year she wrote further on the subject of 
the learned woman: 


T confess I have often been complimented, since I have been in Italy, 
on the books I have given the public. I used at first to deny it with 
some warmth; but, finding I persuaded nobody, I have of late con- 
tented myself with laughing whenever I heard it mentioned, knowing 
the character of a learned woman is far from being ridiculous in this 
country, the greatest families being proud of having produced female 
writers; and a Milanese lady being now professor of mathematics in 
the University of Bologna, invited thither by a most obliging letter, 
wrote by the present Pope, who desired her to accept of the chair, not 
as a recompense for her merit, but to do honor to a town which is under 
his protection. To say truth, there is no part of the world where our 
sex is treated with so much contempt as in England. I do not complain 
of men for having engrossed the government: in excluding us from all 
degrees of power, they preserve us from many fatigues, many dangers, 
and perhaps many crimes. The small proportion of authority that has 
fallen to my share (only over a few children and servants) always has 
been a burden and never a pleasure, and I believe every one finds it so 
who acts from a maxim (I think an indispensable duty), that whoever 
is under my power is under my protection. Those who find a joy in 
inflicting hardships and seeing objects of misery, may have other sen- 
sations; but I have always thought corrections, even when necessary, 
as painful to the giver as to the sufferer, and am therefore very well 
satisfied with the state of subjection we are placed in: but I think it 
the highest injustice to be debarred the entertainment of my closet, 
and that the same studies which raise the character of a man should 
hurt that of awoman. We are educated in the grossest ignorance, and 
no art omitted to stifle our natural reason; if some few get above their 
nurse’s instructions, our knowledge must rest concealed, and be as 
useless to the world as gold in a mine. I am speaking now according 
to our English notions, which may wear out, some ages hence, along 
with others equally absurd. 


Lady Montagu died in London in 1762. Her Turkish Letters 


were published the next year. Her miscellaneous correspond-’ 
1 Montagu, Lady Mary: Works, vol. , p. 252. 


208 THE LEARNED LADY 


ence came out in 1807. Nor was her real significance apparent 
until both publications were accessible. It was then at once 
recognized that no English letter-writer had surpassed Lady 
Mary in brilliancy and wit. Her eye was so quick and accurate 
that no interesting details of dress or manner escaped her. As 
a chronicler and critic of social faults and foibles she was cool, 
keen, merciless. She was graphic in phrase, homely and direct 
in figures of speech, racy and idiomatic. The whole tone of her 
writing was free, lively, energetic, and she could make any 
topic entertaining. As a person there seems to be ground for 
two opposite opinions concerning Lady Mary. People ad- 
mired her and praised her, or they hated her and told scandal- 
ous stories about her. But as a writer there could be but one 
opinion. She was not the first woman of letters to be eulogized, 
but she was the first woman, not in fiction or drama, whose 
writings every one wished to read. 


Mrs. Manley,! a gentlewoman of good family, the daughter 
Mrs. Dela Riv- 0f Sir Roger Manley, was left an orphan while 
igre Manley still young. Her guardian, a cousin twenty 
acai aler years older than herself, tricked her into a false 
marriage, and then, on the birth of a child, announced the 
cheat and disappeared. Most of the fortune left by her father 
had also vanished. The details of her life after this until she 
began her career of authorship are but vaguely known. In 1696 
she made a threefold appeal to the public in Letters written by 
Mrs. Manley ; ? The Lost Lover, a comedy written in seven days, 
produced at Drury Lane, and not successful; and The Royal 
Mischief, successfully brought out at Lincoln’s Inn Fields. In 
the Preface to her Letters (1696) Mrs. Manley spoke of the 
eager contention between the theaters as to which should bring 
her on the stage, but drama was not her natural medium. 
When, after a silence of nine years, she again appeared as an 
author, it was with The Secret History of Queen Zarah (1705), 


1 Cibber: Lives of the Poets, vol, rv, pp. 4-22. 
2 Reprinted in 1725 as A Stage Coach Journey to Exeter. 


IN ENGLAND FROM 1650 TO 1760 209 


a precursor of the scandalous personal and political memories 
for which she became known. In 1709 she published Secret 
Memoirs and Manners of several Persons of Quality of Both 
Sexes. From the New Atalantis, an Island in the Mediterranean. 
The popularity of this book brought a second volume the same 
year. In 1710 appeared Memoirs of Europe towards the Close of 
the Eighth Century. This and a second volume were afterwards 
reprinted as the third and fourth volumes of The New Atalantis. 
The sixth edition of The New Atalantis had a Key at the end of 
the fourth volume. 

This book purported to be by an Italian and put into Eng- 
lish by an anonymous translator. The plan of the romance 
is that of a journey where Astrea (Mrs. Behn revisiting the 
earth), Fame, and Virtue are conducted invisibly about while 
their guide, “Intelligence,” tells them the secret histories of 
the persons they meet. Under this thin disguise the statesmen, 
wits, and beauties of the reign of William and Mary and Queen 
Anne were at once recognized. Mrs. Manley, the publisher, and 
the printer, were arrested. On her own testimony, however, the 
blame was counted hers and she was examined before the court, 
but after about three months she was discharged. And the 
later volumes followed with no public expression of disapproval. 

In 1711 Mrs. Manley succeeded Swift as editor of The Exam- 
iner. In 1714 appeared The Adventures of Rivella, or, the His- 
tory of the Author of Atalantis, by Sir Charles Lovemore. In 
1724 Curll brought this out as Mrs. Manley’s History of Her own 
Life and Times, and it was probably written by her. In 1720 
The Power of Love in Seven Volumes, and Verses, in Anthony 
Hammond’s New Miscellany, close her contributions to litera- 
ture. She died at the house of Alderman Barker whose mistress 
she had been for several years. 

A fact of central interest about Mrs. Manley’s personal and 
literary career is her quarrel with Steele which kept up with 
long lulls and acrimonious crises from before 1709 to 1717. 
In the first volume of The New Atalantis |! she gave an account 

1 Vol. 1, pp. 205-18. 


210 THE LEARNED LADY 


of Steele as “Monsieur le Ingrate,” narrating in detail her aid in 
rescuing him from the impostors who were leading him into 
ruinous expenses in search of the philosopher’s stone, and bit- 
terly assailing him for his later ingratitude in the time of her 
own distresses. In the same year The Tatler, No. 35, possibly 
referred to Mrs. Manley under the description of the snuff- 
eating lady. Certainly in September Swift represented her, un- 
der the name of “Epicene,”’ as one of the professors in Madon- 
ella’s college. Mrs. Manley, assuming that the paper was by 
Steele, wrote a denunciatory letter, which he answered in mild 
fashion, owning his former indebtedness to her and explaining 
his inability to aid her when she appealed to him. In the third 
and fourth volumes of The New Atalantis (1710) were further 
attacks on Steele.!. This third volume was dedicated to him 
as “Isaac Bickerstaffe.”” She quoted his letter, but omitted 
some of the mitigating sentences. Of the “mighty Tatlers” 
leveled at her she says: “A weak, unlearn’d Woman’s Writings, 
to employ so great a Pen! Heavens? how valuable am I? How 
fond of that Immortality, even of Infamy, that you have prom- 
ised! I am ravished at the Thoughts of living a Thousand Years 
hence in your indelible lines, tho’ to give Offence. . . . I shall be 
proud of furnishing Matter towards your inexhaustible Tatler, 
and of being a perpetual Monument of Mr. Bickerstaffe’s Gal- 
lantry and Morality.” 

In August, 1713, (The Guardian, No. 128), Steele entered 
the controversy concerning the demolition of Dunkirk. Mrs. 
Manley answered with a pamphlet in which the “honour and 
Prerogative of the Queen’s Majesty” were defended “against 
the unexampled Insolence of the Author of the Guardian.” 
This closed the open hostilities, and by 1717 there were hand- 
some apologies and frank admissions of error on both sides, 
and the reconciliation seems to have been complete. The chief 
interest we find in Mrs. Manley’s play is the fact that Steele 
wrote the Prologue and that the play was dedicated to him. 


1 Vol. rv, pp. 302-07. (Conversation between Steele as “Don Phoebo” and 
Mrs. Tofts.) 


IN ENGLAND FROM 1650 TO 1760 211 


In this Dedication she said, “I have not known a greater mor- 
tification than when I have reflected upon the severities which 
have flowed from a pen which is now, you see, disposed to 
celebrate and commend you.” ! 


Dryden conferred upon Mrs. Thomas the title of “Corinna” 
and says, “I would have called you Sapho, but 4... pyabeth 
that I hear you are handsomer.” The young Thomas 
poetess had received no regular education, but (1677-1731) 
she improved her mind by reading the politest authors, and 
finally, at twenty-two, she ventured forth as a poet herself. 
She sent two poems to Mr. Dryden asking his critical judgment 
of them. He responded with the following letter: 

Fair Corinna, 

T have sent your two poems back again, after having kept them 
so long from you: They were I thought too good to be a woman’s; some 
of my friends to whom [I read them, were of the same opinion. It is 
not very gallant I must confess to say this of the fair sex; but, most 
certain it is, they generally write with more softness than strength. 
On the contrary, you want neither vigour in your thoughts, nor force 
in your expression, nor harmony in your numbers; and methinks, I 
find much of Orinda in your manner, (to whom I had the honour to 
be related, and also to be known) but I am so taken up with my own 
studies, that I have not leisure to descend to particulars, being in the 
meantime, the fair Corinna’s 

Most humble, and 
Most faithful servant 
JoHN DRYDEN. 
Nov. 12, 1699. 


The poetical career thus auspiciously begun with the praise 
of the great poet ended in disaster. After the death of Mr. 
Gwinnet, who had courted her for sixteen years, in 1717, and of 
her mother in 1719, she was always in financial straits and used 
almost any means to avoid her creditors. During the time 
when she was living under the protection of Mr. Henry Crom- 
well, she gained possession of twenty-five letters written to him 
by Mr. Pope. These she sold to Curll, who published them 

1 The Tatler (ed. Aitkin), vol. rv, p. 242 n. . 


212 THE LEARNED LADY 


in 1726, and she thus gained a disgraceful place in The Dunciad. 
Her Poems were published in 1722, 1726, 1727, but she does not 
seem to have been rewarded with either fame or money. Be- 
sides other unimportant literary work she wrote an autobiog- 
raphy entitled Pylades and Corinna; or, Memoirs of the Lives, 
Amours, and Writings of Richard Gwinnet, Esquire, and Mrs. 
Elizabeth Thomas, junior. ... To which is prefixed the Life of 
Corinna, written by herself. This was published in 1731 in two 
volumes. The autobiography in an abridged form appears in 
Cibber’s Lives of the Poets.1 


Miss Eliza Fowler, the daughter of a small shopkeeper in 
Mrs. Eliza London, was married before she was twenty to 
Haywood the Reverend Valentine Haywood.2 In 1721 
(1693-1756) she left her husband * and thereafter she had 
her own way to make. A few unimportant attempts as an 
actress* and some occasional unsuccessful attempts as a play- 
wright may be set aside as not belonging to her real career. It 
was as a writer of romantic tales and novels that she achieved 
success. This vein once tapped, the ore, such as it was, 
seemed inexhaustible. From 1719 to 1756 Mrs. Haywood 
published about seventy single works, nearly all of them 
“fictitious tales.” > If we should count various editions, the 
numbers of times she was privileged to see some work by her 


1 Cibber: Lives of the Poets, vol. tv, pp. 146-63. 

2 Whicher, George Frisbie: The Life and Romances of Mrs. Eliza Haywood 
(Columbia, 1915), p. 2. 

3 “Whereas Elizabeth Haywood, Wife of the Reverend Mr. Valentine Hay- 
wood, eloped from him her Husband on Saturday the 26th. of November last 
past, and went away without his Knowledge and Consent: This is to give 
Notice to all persons in general, That if any one shall trust her either with 
Money or Goods, or if she shall contract Debts of any kind whatsoever, the 
said Mr. Haywood will not pay the same.” (Post Boy, January 7, 1721. 
Quoted by Mr. Whicher, p. 3.) ‘ 

¢ In 1723, at Drury Lane, she played “Mrs. Graspall” in her own comedy, 
A Wife to be Lett. In 1715, six years before she left her husband, she had 
appeared as “‘Chloe”’ in Shadwell’s adaptation of Timon of Athens. 

5 A complete bibliography of Mrs. Haywood’s works is given by Mr. 
Whicher in his Life and Romances of Mrs. Eliza Haywood, pp. 126-204. 


IN ENGLAND FROM 1650 TO 1760 213 


issue from the press during her thirty-seven years of author- 
ship would exceed one hundred and fifty. Her most prolific 
years were 1724 to 1728, thirty-three new books appearing 
during this short time. 

This crowding of book after book through the press, the 
numerous editions of the more popular novels, and the fact 
that four “Collections” of her works had appeared by 1729, 
sufficiently attest her extraordinary contemporary popularity. 
Mrs. Haywood’s fecundity is not a matter for great surprise. 
It is easy to understand that if she could write one novel like 
Love in Excess, she could write half a hundred more without 
seriously taxing her creative spirit. But to the present-day 
reader her popularity seems incredible. Of what sort was the 
reading public that stimulated her and her publishers to such 
activity? According to Mr. Gosse’s conjecture in “What Ann 
Lang Read,” “Eliza was read by servants in the kitchen, by 
seamstresses, by basket-women, by prentices of all sorts, male 
and female, but chiefly the latter.”.+ But Mr. Whicher points 
out that Mrs. Haywood’s novels were never issued in cheap 
form, and that one to three shillings for a slender octavo would 
put the books beyond the purses of the servant class.” In all 
probability Ann Lang, the milliner’s apprentice, is less truly 
representative of Mrs. Haywood’s readers than is Polly in Col- 
man’s Polly Honeycomb (1760). Polly did not begin her career 
as a novel-reader till more than a decade after the appearance 
of Pamela, so that a fairly wide range of fiction was open to her, 
and Mrs. Haywood could be but one element of her possible 
literary joys. But we know that The History of Miss Betsy 
Thoughiless was one of her favorites, and the extracts she 
gives from Mrs. Haywood’s previous novels and the names she 
cherishes, read like satires on that lady’s heroics. If Polly may 
be counted as typical of Mrs. Haywood’s public, we have read- 
ers distinctly above the servant class. Mr. Honeycomb was a 


1 Gosse, Edmund: Gossip ina Library ; “What Ann Lang Read,” pp. 161- 


69. 
2 Whicher: The Life and Romances of Mrs. Eliza Haywood, p. 13. 


Q14 THE LEARNED LADY 


well-to-do tradesman with clerks in the office and a fairly elab- 
orate domestic establishment. Polly may even have been to a 
finishing school. There are also indications of a class of readers 
higher still. The ladies of fashion who so attentively pursued 
Mrs. Manley’s New Atalantis could hardly be supposed indif- 
ferent to the social scandal in Mrs. Haywood’s Memoirs of a 
Certain Island and The Court of Carimania. In Leonora’s 
library there was a Book of Novels which would doubtless appeal 
to the same taste as Mrs. Haywood’s tales. Furthermore, the 
impassioned protests against novel-reading in all didactic ad- 
dresses to young ladies would indicate a widespread devotion 
to fiction in the higher social ranks. 

Mrs. Haywood’s popularity was certainly contributed to by 
alack of important competitors. Before the advent of Pamela 
the young girl eager for stories must read French romances, 
Defoe’s novels, or Mrs. Haywood’s novels. Defoe was not 
particularly attractive to the Pollys of the age, and the taste 
for the many-volumed romances, beloved of ladies from Doro- 
thy Osborne and Mrs. Pepys to Biddy Tipkin and Arabella,! 
was gradually dying out. So Mrs. Haywood had her chance. 
Her “‘little Performances,” as she called them, offered in brief 
compass the love and adventure of the long romance without 
its tax on the reader’s patience. 

Mrs. Haywood’s short romances have but one theme. “Eliza 
writes, but Love alone inspires,” is a correct analysis by one of 
her admirers. She is the self-appointed chronicler of Love and 
all its attendant passions. She sets herself to trace “The Wild 
Career of untamed Love in the proud Heart of Arbitrary 
Man”; to note the thrilling ardors, the languishments, the 
ecstasies and violent agitations on the part of the adored one; 
to depict with extravagant emphasis the jealousy, rage, de- 
spair, of disappointed affections. These experiences of the 
heart take place in the midst of adventures of the most melo- 
dramatic sort. Flights over land and sea are complicated by 
storms and shipwreck, by bandits and pirates. The heroic play 


1 See section on “‘Novel-Reading Girl.” 


IN ENGLAND FROM 1650 TO 1760 215 


itself is less prolific in elopements, seductions, duels, murders, 
and suicides. The sword, the dagger, and the poison cup play 
an active part in cutting Gordian knots too intricately tied. 
There is small effort to make the story probable. The whole 
effort is to make it exciting. The reader is plunged from ad- 
venture to adventure with no breathing place in which to be 
critical, and it is by this headlong speed that the attention is 
held. But after reading several of the tales it becomes appar- 
ent that to know one is to know all. The passions, the situa- 
tions, the obstacles, the dénouements recur. Nor are the 
people differentiated. The ardent lovers, their yielding or tem- 
porarily obdurate fair ones, the jealous lovers and mistresses, 
hard-hearted fathers, faithless friends, and mercenary confi- 
dants, make up the personnel of each story. Among the hun- 
dreds of characters there is not one that remains in the mem- 
ory as a real person. They are but puppets through whose 
convulsive starts and unnatural tones Mrs. Haywood vainly 
endeavors to make genuine passion speak. 

Nor have these novels any additional points of interest such 
as might come from witty dialogue, pungent comment, or beau- 
tiful description. Mrs. Haywood’s English is fluent, intelli- 
gible, and fairly correct, but it never attains distinction. The 
total effect of these tales of passion is one of almost stupefying 
dullness and monotony. It is painful to reflect on the blunted 
moral, emotional, and zxsthetic sensibilities of a generation of 
readers who found their solace in The Excess of Love and its 
congeners. 

Mrs. Haywood’s activities suffered something of a check after 
1729, possibly owing to the savage attacks on her by Pope 
in The Dunciad (1728).' At any rate, for some reason or com- 
bination of reasons, no new original works of any importance 
by her appeared between 1729 and 1751. Among various expe- 
dients to earn a livelihood during this period the most notable 
is her attempt to establish herself as a publisher m 1742, but 


1 Whicher, G. F.: The Life and Romances of Mrs. Eliza Haywood, chap. v, 
“The Heroine of The Dunciad.” 


- 


216 THE LEARNED LADY 


since only two books are recorded as published by her she prob- 
ably quickly found herself without the business training for 
such an enterprise.! A more notable undertaking is The Female 
Spectator edited and at least partly written by Mrs. Haywood 
in April, 1744-May, 1746. 

She entered again the field of authorship with her best novels, 
The History of Miss Betsy Thoughtless, in four volumes (1751), 
and The History of Jemmy and Jenny Jessamy, three volumes 
(1752), which have the merit of faintly foreshadowing the 
domestic novel of a later day.? 

The paper is professedly modeled on the work of Addison 
and Steele. The writing purports to be by an editorial group 
of four ladies with Mrs. Haywood as editor-in-chief. A viva- 
cious widow in whom lovers confide; Euphrosine, so called be- 
cause of her brightness and charm; and Mira, a lady of heredi- 
tary wit, complete the quadrumvirate. Their avowed purpose is 
to give entertaining items of news, discuss dress, decorum, and 
social foibles in friendly admonition, and analyze the human 
heart. But there is no real emphasis except on the last of these 
topics. The Tenderillas, Claribellas, Elismondas, Dorindas, 
and the rest, pursue their amorous way from volume to volume, 
unconscious that the world holds any interest but love, that 
“noblest, softest, and the best” of all the passions. 

But now and then the editors or some contributor break out 


1 Whicher, G. F.: The Life and Romances of Mrs. Eliza Haywood, p. 22. 

It may be noticed that late in the century several women were successful 
printers and publishers. ‘“‘Mrs. Munelly was a printer in White Fryars; 
and publisher of The St. James’s Evening Post, a very old newspaper, the 
precursor of The St. James’s Chronicle” (Nichols’s Literary Anecdotes, vol. m1, 
p- 467.) “In April, 1775, Mrs. Baskerville, who had carried on the printing 
business of her husband, announced that business for sale, but she continued 
the business of letter founding in all its parts.’ (Ibid., vol. m1, p. 459.) 
“William Caslon, whose foundry was of great repute, died in 1778, leaving the 
business to his widow. Her merit and ability in conducting a capital business 
during the life of her husband, and afterwards till her son was capable of 
managing it, can only be known to those who had dealings with that manu- 
facturer. In quickness of understanding, and activity of execution, she has left 
few equals among her sex.” (Ibid., vol. m1, p. 357.) 

2 Tbid., chap. 7, “The Domestic Novel.” 


fopesa eens ence po ene eats Hern paatNN tar UTD 
TOPE PPORD STDS MOE MRL SSA AEN EPELD boot 11 be 


‘ 


fer awe vm SS 


THE SUPPOSED EDITORS OF THE FEMALE SPECTATOR 
BY MRS. ELIZA HAYWOOD 
From Vol. I of the seventh edition, 1771 


Mrs. Haywood is the scribe; the Iady in black is the vivacious widow of quality ; 
the lady standing is ““Euphrosine ” ; the other lady is “ Mira” 


id 


IN ENGLAND FROM 1650 TO 1760 217 


of the charmed circle, and we get a glimpse of women who, 
along with their overworked hearts, have at least rudimentary 
minds. A certain “Cleora” urges that women’s best qualities 
are often stifled by a wrong education, and that “the world 
would infallibly be happier than it is if women were more 
knowing than they generally are.” The studies suggested are 
history, geography, some of the more agreeable parts of mathe- 
matics, and “Enchanting Philosophy, its path strewd with 
Roses.” Music, poetry, dancing, and novels are suggested by 
way of relaxation. For solid reading the recommendation in- 
cludes translations of Latin historians and French books of 
travel, and closes with Bailey’s Dictionary, “a library of itself 
since there was never person, place or action of any note, from 
the creation down to the time of its being published, but what 
it gives a general account of.” In another essay “Philo-Na- 
ture” spends impassioned pages urging ladies to study natural 
history, but nullifies her eloquence by the narrow limit she 
assigns to their work. “It is easy to see, that it is not my ambi- 
tion to render my sex what is called deeply-learned.”” Women 
need only “a kind of general understanding” of science, such 
as will enable them to take an agreeable part in conversation. 
They are not called to abstruse and difficult researches, but 
merely to those light and charming observations that catch the 
watchful eye on little excursions such as ladies make in fields, 
meadows, and gardens. 

In The Wife (1755) Mrs. Haywood is less liberal than in The 
Spectator. The married lady is particularly warned against 
the dangers of an active mind or speculative disposition. She 
may be so misguided as to “attempt to investigate those things 
that Heaven has hidden from human understanding,” in 
which case her brain will be distracted by books of controversy. 
Or she may strangely busy her mind about the planets, wonder- 
ing whether thosé vast and luminous orbs are habitable, and if 
so, whether possessed .by men or angels or the ghosts of the 
departed. A lady so fantastically engaged is likely to waste 
her time over such books as Fontanelle’s Plurality of Worlds. — 


218 THE LEARNED LADY 


A woman who once gets either of these fancies into her head, is lost 
to everything besides; her husband, children, family, friends, aequain- 
tances, with all the necessary avocations and duties of her station, 
seem altogether unworthy her regard; she lives in the clouds, and it 
is with difficulty she is dragg’d down to the performance of any- 
thing requir’d of her below. 

Methinks it is down-right madness to waste any part of time in 
seeking after things impossible to be attain’d; or if attain’d could be 
of no real service: — a married woman, above all others, should avoid 
this error: — it best becomes her to center her whole studies within 
the compass of her own walls, — to enquire no farther than into the 
humours and inclinations of her husband and children, to the end she 
may know how to oblige those she finds in him, and rectify whatever 
is amiss in them, and not attempt to extend her speculations beyond 
her family, and those things which are entrusted to her management. 


Mrs. Haywood’s programme reads like a combination from 
Moliére’s Chrysal and Mrs. Barbauld. 
In 1729 Swift wrote from Dublin to Pope: 


There are three citizens’ wives in this town; one of them whose 
name is Grierson, a Scotch book-seller’s wife. She is a very good Latin 


Mrs. Mary and Greek scholar, and has lately published a fine 
Barber (1690?- edition of Tacitus, with a Latin dedication to the 
1757) Lord Lieutenant; and she writes Carmina Angli- 


cana non Contemnenda. ‘The second is one Mrs. Barber, wife to 
a woolen draper, who is our chief poetess, and, upon the whole, has no 
ill genius. I fancy I have mentioned her to you formerly. The last is 
the bearer hereof, and the wife of a surly rich husband, who checks her 
vein; whereas Mrs. Grierson is only well to pass, and Mrs. Barber, as 
it becomes the chief poetess, is but poor. The bearer’s name is Sykins. 
She has a very good taste of poetry, has read much, and, as I hear, has 
writ one or two things with applause, which I never saw, except about 
six lines she sent me unknown, with a piece of sturgeon, some years 
ago, on my birthday. Can you show such a triumfeminate in London?! 


Soon after Swift added Mrs. Pilkington to his list of Dublin 

writers, but it still remains a triumfeminate, because we hear no 

more of Mrs. Sykins, the surly rich husband having apparently 

been successful in checking her vein. Her proposed visit to 
1 Pope, Alexander: Works (Elwin and Courthope), vol. vi, p. 177. 


IN ENGLAND FROM 1650 TO 1760 219 


Pope was also a failure. She went to Twickenham and deliv- 
ered Swift’s letter, but, for some unknown reason, returned 
to London two hours before the time Pope had appointed to 
receive her. His irritation found expression in the reference to 
“‘an Irish poetess” as among his troublesome visitors in one 
version of The Epistle to Dr. Arbuthnot.! 

Mrs. Mary Barber would hardly be so much as a name to- 
day were it not for Swift. He first met her in about the year 
1729, and from that time to 1736 letters to and from him have 
much to say concerning her career. She was then nearly forty, 
most of her poems existed in manuscript, she was already some- 
thing of a celebrity in Dublin, and her one desire was a sub- 
scription publication of her work. In pursuance of this wish 
she went to London late in 1730 and Swift sent kindly letters in 
her behalf to several of his London friends. In the summer of 
1731 a mysterious letter to the Queen, purporting to be from 
Swift, contained this passage: “Mrs. Barber, the best female 
poet of this or perhaps any age, is now in your majesty’s capi- 
tal; known to Lady Hertford, Lady Torrington, Lady Walpole, 
etc.; a woman whose genius is honoured by every man of genius 
in this kingdom, and either honoured or envied by every man of 
genius in England.” ? Pope sent a copy of this letter to Swift, 
who immediately and indignantly, in letters to Pope and the 
Countess of Suffolk, disavowed it. Such a letter, he said, would 
be “a folly so transcendent, that no man could be guilty of, 
who was not fit for Bedlam.” In his letter to Pope Swift said of 
Mrs. Barber: 

Dr. Delany has been long her protector; and he, being many years 
my acquaintance, desired my good office for her, and brought her 
several times to the deanery. I knew she was poetically given, and, 
for a woman, had a sort of genius that way. She appeared very mod- 
est and pious, and I believe was sincere; and wholy turned to poetry. 


I did conceive her journey to England was on the score of her trade, 
being a woollen-draper, until Dr. Delany said, she had a design of 


1 Pope, Alexander: Works (Elwin and Courthope), vol. vu, p. 191; vol. 
Ti, p. 243. ; 
2 Swift, Jonathan: Works (ed. Scott), vol. xvm. p. 359. 


220 THE LEARNED LADY 


printing her poems by subscription, and desired I would befriend her: 
which I did, chiefly by your means, the doctor still urging me on: 
upon whose request I writ to her two or three times, because she 
thought my countenancing her might be of use. Lord Carteret 
very much befriended her, and she seems to have made her way not 
ill. 

The perpetrator of the forged letter and the purpose in send- 
ing it to the Queen have never been discovered, but the irrita- 
tion arising from it might well have destroyed Swift’s interest 
in Mrs. Barber’s subscription list. He apparently recognized, 
however, that she was innocent of offense and continued his 
efforts in her behalf. Dr. Arbuthnot writes that he has shown 
“as much civility as he could” to Mrs. Barber.2 Gay has 
“made a visit to Mrs. Barber.’ Lady Betty Germain says 
Mrs. Barber “goes on in her subscription very well.”’4 But the 
list was incomplete by the summer of 1732 and dragged slowly 
on till 1734 in spite of the aid of Mr. Barber, Lord Mayor of 
London, Mrs. Worsley, Mrs. Cesar, Mrs. Conduitt, Miss 
Kelly, Lord Carteret, Lord Orrery, and the Duchess of Queens- 
berry, all of whom in response to applications from Swift wrote 
to him concerning the progress of Mrs. Barber’s affairs. In 
1733 Mrs. Conduitt wrote that “the town had already been so 
long invited into the subscription that most people had already 
refused or accepted.” > It was not till 1734 that the list was 
considered long enough to make publication safe. 

Swift crowned his service by writing a dedicatory letter to 
Lord Orrery. In this letter he spoke of Mrs. Barber as follows: 


She desireth your protection on account of her wit and good sense, 
as well as of her humility, her gratitude, and many other virtues. I 
have read most of her poems; and believe your Lordship will observe, 
that they generally contain something new and useful, tending to the 
reproof of some vice or folly, or recommending some virtue. She never 
writes on a subject with general unconnected topics, but always with 


1 Swift: Works (ed. Scott), vol. xvu, p. 367. Letter to Countess of Suffolk, 
p. 371. 

2 Thid., vol. xvu, p. 306. 8 Ibid., vol. xvu, p. 342. 

4 Tbid., vol. xvi, p. 353. 5 Ibid., vol. xvi, p. 168. 


IN ENGLAND FROM 1650 TO 1760 221 


a scheme and method driving to some particular end: wherein many 
writers in verse, and of some distinction, are so often known to fail. 
Tn short, she seemeth to have a true poetical genius, better cultivated 
than could be expected, either from her sex, or the scene she hath acted 
in, as the wife of acitizen. Yet I am assured, that no woman was ever 
more useful to her husband in the way of his business. Poetry hath 
only been her favorite amusement; for which she hath one qualifica- 
tion that I wish all good poets possess’d a share of; I mean, that she 
is ready to take advice, and submit to have her verse corrected, by 
those who are generally allow’d to be the best judges. 


But for the persistent efforts of Swift the subscription would 
never have been completed. Yet Mrs. Barber had gaimed inci- 
dentally such a retinue of supporting friends that her poems 
were republished in 1735 and 1736. There was apparently a 
touch of personal venom in the passage where Mrs. Pilkington 
chronicles the generous aid given Mrs. Barber and emphasizes 
the final small success of the poems: 

Mrs. Barber . . . was at this time writing a volume of Poems, some 
of which I fancy might, at this Day, be seen in the Cheesemungers, 
Chandlers, Pastry-cooks, and Second-hand Book-sellers’ Shops: 
However, dull as they were, they certainly would have been much 
worse, but that Dr. Delany frequently held what he called a Senatus 
Consultum, to correct these undigested materials; at which were pres- 
ent sometimes the Dean, (in the Chair) but always Mrs. Grierson, 
Mr. Pilkington, the Doctor, and myself.” 


A poem in which they were summoned to one of these meetings 
began: 

Mighty Thomas a solemn Senatus I call, 

To consult for Saphira, so come one-and all. 


In 1736 Mrs. Barber was again in financial straits. A scheme 
for letting lodgings, and another scheme for selling Irish linens 
at Bath having proved impracticable, she made a final appeal 


1 Swift: Works: (ed. Scott), vol. xvm, p. 147. 

2 In 1754, at a sale of 150 pictures belonging to Dr. Mead, a picture of 
“Mrs. Barber the poetess, in Water Colours,” brought only 17. 9s, the next low- 
est price paid for any picture. (Notes and Queries, 5th Series, vol. u, p. 107.) 
Mrs. Barber suffered from severe attacks of gout and she had been one of Dr. 
Mead’s patients. 


222 THE LEARNED LADY 


to Swift. Dr. King of Oxford and Mrs. Cleland had spoken so 
warmly of Swift’s Treatise on Polite Conversation that many 
people wished to see it, and Lady Worsley with many other of 
Mrs. Barber’s patronesses urged her to ask Swift to let her pub- 
lish it for her own benefit. After apologies for asking such a 
favor she says: 

I humbly beseech you, sir, if you do not think it proper not to be 
offended with me for asking it; for it was others, that out of kindness 
to me, put me upon it. They said you made no advantage for yourself, 
by your writings; and that, since you honoured me with your protec- 
tion, I had all the reason in the world to think it would be a pleasure to 
you, to see me in easy circumstances; that everybody would gladly 
subscribe for anything Dr. Swift wrote; and indeed, I believe in my 
conscience, it would be the making of me.! 


Dean Swift presented her with the copy and the sale proved 
advantageous. 

The career of a mediocre writer like Mrs. Barber would hardly 
justify chronicling were it not for the interesting exemplifica- 
tion it offers of the system of patronage. Swift and his influ- 
ential friends manifest no particular interest in Mrs. Barber’s 
“moral and not inelegant verse,” but responsibility for her 
welfare seems to have been accepted by them without demur, 
nor does she seem to have felt any hesitancy about accepting 
any aid that might be forthcoming. 


The most vivid introduction to Mrs. Grierson comes from 
the pen of her early friend Mrs. Pilkington: 


About two years before this a young Woman of about eighteen 
Mrs. Constantia years of age, was brought to my Father, by a Sta- 
Grierson tioner to be by him instructed in Midwifery.? She 
(1706 ?-33) was Mistress of Hebrew, Greek, Latin, and French, 
understood the mathematicks, as well as most men. And what made 
these extraordinary Talents yet more surprizing was, that her Parents 


1 Swift: Works (ed. Scott), vol. x1x. pp. 5-9. 

2 “There being then but one Man-Midwife in the Kingdom my Father made 
himself Master of That useful Art, and practised it with great success, Repu- 
tation and Humanity.” (Mrs. Pilkington: Memoirs, vol. vu, p. 12.) 


IN ENGLAND FROM 1650 TO 1760 223 


were poor illiterate Country People; so that her learning appeared 
like the Gift poured out on the Apostles, of speaking all languages, 
without the Pains of Study; or, like the intuitive Knowledge of 
Angels: Yet in as much as the Power of Miracles is ceased; we must 
allow she used human Means for such great and excellent Acquire- 
ments: And yet in a long Friendship and Familiarity with her, I could 
never obtain a satisfactory Account from her on this Head; only she 
said, “she had received some little Instruction from the Minister of 
the Parish, when she could spare time from her Needlework, to which 
she was closely kept by her Mother.” She wrote elegantly both in 
Verse and Prose; and some of the most delightful Hours I ever past, 
were in the Conversation of this female Philosopher. 

My Father readily consented to accept her as a Pupil; and gave 
her a general Invitation to his Table, so that she and I were seldom 
asunder. My Parents were well pleased with our Intimacy, as her 
Piety was not inferior to her Learning. Whether it was owing to her 
own Desire, or the Envy of those who survived her, I know not; but of 
her various and beautiful Writings except one Poem of her’s in Mrs. 
Barber’s Works, I have never seen any published; ’t is true, as her 
turn was chiefly to philosophical or divine Subjects, they might not 
be agreeable to the present Taste.! 


A eulogy of Mrs. Grierson was written by Henry Brooke 
(1703-1783) the author of a tragedy, Gustavus Vasa, and 
various popular novels, in a poem on “The Art of Printing,” 
and an account of her, derived from his notes, was published 
in Brookiana in 1804. 


Mr. Brooke has celebrated the learning, piety, and virtue, of Mrs. 
Grierson, in a poem which he wrote on the Art of Printing. This lady 
was born in the city of Kilkenny. Such is the vanity of man, that he 
thinks he pays a sufficient compliment to woman, when he says, she 
has a masculine mind, when, in truth, it is known that there are many 
females on record, who, have rivalled the lords of the creation in every 
branch of science, and department of learning. In this constellation 
the name of Mrs. Grierson will shine with increasing luster. Her 
father observed, that his daughter, while yet a child, was very fond of 
books, and not-withstanding his circumstances were narrow, he was 
determined to furnish her with all those that he thought were suited 
to her years; but he soon found, to his great joy, that her capacity was 
not to be measured by her years, it flew before them; and that her 


1 Mrs. Pilkington: Memoirs, vol. 1, pp. 27-29. 


224 THE LEARNED LADY 


genius and inclination would triumph over every difficulty, even with- 
out the aid of a master. In a time that is almost too short to be men- 
tioned, she was allowed by competent judges, to be a perfect mistress 
of the Greek and Roman tongues; and whilst other young women were 
proud of carrying the keys of closets, etc., she carried the keys of 
science, which she unlocked and surveyed, not with a transient eye, 
but with the warmth and constancy of one that fell in love with their 
beauties, and could duly appreciate their charms, so that all her attain- 
ments may be said to have been dictated by nature, aided by laudable 
curiosity and industry. She was early married to George Grierson, 
Esq., the king’s printer. As he had a good library, she had an oppor- 
tunity of indulging her literary pursuits.! 


After her marriage Mrs. Grierson carried on her studies with 
such ardor that at twenty-one she brought out an edition of 
Terence and at twenty-three an edition of Tacitus. When she 
died at twenty-seven, she left a partially completed edition of 
Sallust. Mrs. Barber says that she also wrote an unpublished 
Abridgment of the History of England. Her Tacitus has received 
high praise. Dr. Harwood, a learned bibliographer, commented 
on it in the following terms: 

This is one of the best edited books ever delivered to the world. 
Mrs. Grierson was a lady possessed of singular erudition, and had an 
elegance of taste and solidity of judgment, which justly rendered her 
one of the most wonderful as well as amiable of her sex. Prefixed to 
this edition of Tacitus, is a dedication to Lord Carteret, in most elegant 
Latinity.? 


Mrs. Grierson also wrote occasional verse a few specimens of 
which appear in Mrs. Pilkington’s Memoirs, in Poems by 
Eminent Ladies, and in Mrs. Barber’s edition of her own poems. 
Mrs. Barber in her Preface praised Mrs. Grierson and gave 
many of the facts used by later writers. Mr. Ballard was 
anxious to give a full account of Mrs. Grierson, and he wrote in 
1747 to Mrs. Barber for further information. “I likewise,” says 
Mr. Ballard, “got the same friend to apply to a learned and 
eminent dignitary in the church in Ireland; one who is thor- 


1 Brookiana, vol. 1, p. 123. 
2 Clarke, Adam: A Bibliographical Dictionary, vol. v1, p. 142. 


IN ENGLAND FROM 1650 TO 1760 225 


oughly acquainted with all the various circumstances of her 
life and is every way qualified for the performance.” The 
eminent churchman promised an account of her life, but it 
never came to hand, so Mr. Ballard was obliged to content him- 
self with a general eulogy. He says, “‘If Heaven had spared her 
life, and blessed her with health, which she wanted for some 
years before her death, there is good reason to think she would 
have made as great a figure in the learned world, as any of her 
sex are recorded to have done.” Mrs. Grierson, “‘the learned 
Nymph Whom Curiosity engaged every Person to see,” } was — 
on intimate terms with Swift, Thomas Sheridan, and Dr. 
Delany, and it is singular that a more exact account of her life 
should not have been preserved. 


Letitia Pilkington, the daughter of Dr. Van Lewen, a physi- 
cian of Dublin, was about twenty-two years 1 nts van 
younger than Mrs. Barber, but Mrs. Barber’s Lewen Pilking- 
work came so late in her life and Mrs. Pilkington ‘” (1712-59) 
was so precocious that they were in effect poetical contempo- 
raries. Leetitia’s love for literature and her lively mind were 
in evidence before she was five. She thus describes the begin- 
ning of her education: 


My mother strictly followed Solomon’s Advice, in never sparing the 
Rod; insomuch that I have frequently been whipt for looking blue of 
a frosty Morning; and whether I deserved it or not, I was sure of Cor- 
rection every Day of my life. 

From my earliest Infancy I had a Disposition to Letters; but my 
Eyes being weak after the Small-pox, I was not permitted to look at a 
Book; my Mother regarding more the Beauty of my Face, than the 
Improvement of my Mind; neither was I allowed to learn to read: 
This Restraint, as it generally happens, made me but more earnest in 
the Pursuit of what I imagined must be so delightful. Twenty times 
a Day have I been corrected, for asking what such and such Letters 
spelt; my Mother used to tell me the Word, accompanying it with a 
good Box on the Ear, which, I suppose, imprinted it on my Mind.... 
I do assure you, it had this Effect on me, that I never forgot what was 


1 Mrs. Pilkington: Memoirs, vol. 1, p. 46. 


226 THE LEARNED LADY 


once told me; and quickly arrived at my desired Happiness, being 
able to read before she thought I knew all my Letters; but this Pleas- 
ure I was obliged to enjoy by Stealth with Fear and Trembling. 

I was at this Time about five Years of Age; and my Mother being 
one Day abroad, I had happily laid hold on Alexander's Feast and 
found something in it so charming, that I read it aloud; but how like 
a condemned Criminal did I look, when my Father, softly opening his 
Study-door, took me in the very Fact; I dropt my Book and burst 
into Tears, begging Pardon and promising never to do so again: But 
my Sorrow was soon dispelled, when he bade me not to be frightened, 
but read to him, which to his great Surprize, I did very distinctly, and 
without hurting the Beauty of the Numbers. Instead of the whipping, 
of which I stood in dread, he took me up in his Arms, and kissed me, 
giving me a whole Shilling, as a Reward, and told me, “He would give 
me another as soon as I got a Poem by Heart,” which he put into my 
Hand, and proved to be Mr. Pope’s sacred Eclogue; which Task I 
performed before my Mother returned Home. They were both aston- 
ished at my Memory, and from that Day forward, I was permitted to 
read as much as I pleased; only my Father took care to furnish me 
with the best, and politest Authors; and took Delight in explaining 
to me, whatever, by Reason of my tender Years, was above my Ca- 
pacity of Understanding. 

But chiefly was I charmed and ravished with the Sweets of Poetry; 
all my Hours were dedicated to the Muses; and, from a Reader, I 
quickly became a Writer; I may truly say with Mr. Pope, 

I lisp’d in Numbers, for the Numbers came. 

My Performances had the good Fortune to be looked on as extraor- 
dinary for my Years; and the greatest and wisest Men in the Kingdom 
did not disdain to hear the Pratile of the little Muse, as they called me, 
even in my Childish Days. But as I approached towards Woman- 
hood a new Scene opened to me; and by the Time I had looked on 
thirteen Years, I had almost as many Lovers. 


At seventeen Letitia married a penniless Irish parson, Mr. 
Matthew Pilkington. Soon after their marriage they became 
well known in the Dublin literary set. Constantia Grierson 
who was the first to congratulate Lzetitia on her marriage, and 
who witnessed the cruel treatment the couple received from 
Mrs. Van Lewen, introduced them to Dr. Delany who be- 
friended them. Through Dr. Delany they met Swift, who was 
much taken by the “little poetical parson and his littler poeti- 


IN ENGLAND FROM 1650 TO 1760 227 


cal wife.” He called them “The Mighty Thomas Thumb and 
her Serene Highness of Lilliput,” ! and for a short time they 
were evidently much at the deanery. The most famous por- 
tions of her Memoirs have to do with Swift. His early biograph- 
ers were apparently unwilling to own how much of their vivid, 
picturesque material came from a source so little esteemed, 
but Mr. Craik credits Mrs. Pilkington with “a picture of the 
Dean which is probably more true to the life than many that 
are more pretentious.” 2 The young lady’s wit, vivacity, cour- 
age, and independent mind brought a new and piquant element 
into Swift’s life. He scolded her till she fled in tears, but at his 
imperious summons she always came back in new, adoring sub- 
jection. On one occasion, after an exceptionally severe castiga- 
tion, he wrote sharply but with an underlying compliment: 
“You must shake off the Leavings of your Sex. If you cannot 
keep a Secret, and take a Chiding, you will quickly be out of 
my Sphere. Corrigible People are to be chid; those who are 
otherwise, may be very safe from any Lectures of mine: I 
should rather choose to indulge them in their Follies, than 
attempt to set them right.”* Usually her wit could turn an 
impending quarrel into some sort of gay banter. On one occa- 
sion Swift began to reprimand her for having copied out one 
of his manuscript poems. But she interrupted, saying she did 
not copy it, but knew it by heart from one reading. Whereupon 
there ensued a memory contest. The test given her was from 
Shakespeare, all of whose works she said she could repeat. 
“The Line he first gave me, he had purposely picked out for 
its Singular Oddness: But [sic] rancours in the Vessel of my Peace. 
Macbeth. I readily went on with the whole Speech, and did 
so several times, that he tried me with the different Plays. The 
Dean then took down Hudibras, and ordered me to examine 
him in it, as he had done me in Shakespeare; and, to my great 

1 Swift to Lord Bathurst, October, 1730: Works (Elrington Ball), vol. rv, 
p- 169, note. 

2 Craik, Henry: Life of Swift, vol. u, p. 189. 

3 Mrs. Pilkington: Memoirs, vol. 1, p. 132. Swift: Works (ed. Scott), vol. 
XVI, p. 171. 


228 THE LEARNED LADY 


surprize, I found he remembered every Line from Beginning 
to End of it.”! 

When Swift first saw little Mrs. Pilkington as a bride he 
exclaimed, ‘What, this poor little Child married! God help ~ 
her, she is early in Trouble.”’? The words were prophetic, for 
the troubles began very soon. They were engendered by liter- 
ary jealousy, for Mr. Pilkington was a poet on his own account. 
Compliments to the wife became as wormwood to the husband, 
especially when such compliments were accompanied by frank 
depreciation of his own talents. Swift once put a question to 
Mrs. Pilkington and received her answer. Mr. Pilkington then 
entered the room and was asked the same question and gave an 
unsatisfactory answer. “P-x on you for a Dunce,” said the 
Dean. “Were your Wife and you to sit for a Fellowship, I 
would give her one, sooner than admit you a Sizar.” From that 
time on Mr. Pilkington viewed his wife “with scornful yet with 
jealous eyes.”’§ 

On another occasion the two wrote odes in imitation of 
Horace. Angered at her success Mr. Pilkington told her that 
a Needle was more becoming to a Woman’s Hand than a Pen, 
and was placated only when the lady consigned her own ode 
to the flames and highly praised his. Her comment is: “And 
here let me seriously advise every Lady, who has the Misfor- 
tune to be poetically turned, never to marry a Poet....If a 
Man cannot bear his Friend should write, much less can he 
endure it in his Wife; it seems to set them too much on a Level 
with their Lords and Masters; and this I take to be the true 
Reason why even Men of Sense discountenance Learning in 
Women, and commonly choose for Mates the most illiterate 
and stupid of the Sex; and bless their Stars their Wife is not a 
Wit.”* Jealousy was, however, the least of Mr. Pilkington’s 
faults. He soon proved himself “the arrantest rogue in Eng- 
land.” The action he brought against his wife for divorce was 
not sustained by the courts, but the outcome of it was that he 


1 Mrs. Pilkington: Memoirs, vol. 1, p. 135. 2 Ibid., vol. 1, p. 119. 
3 Ibid., vol. 1, p. 120. 4 Ibid., vol. 1, p. 249. 


IN ENGLAND FROM 1650 TO 1760 229 


abandoned her and her two children, and she was left penniless. 
She went to London where she lived a life compounded of mis- 
fortunes and misdemeanors. 

In the Memoirs she gives in extenso the various expedients 
whereby she tried to get a living. One of the most successful 
was as a public letter-writer for which she issued the following 
card: 

Letters written here on any Subject, except on the Law, Price 
Twelvepence; Petitions also Drawn at the same Rate. Mem. 
Ready Money, no Trust.} 


Under cover of getting subscriptions for the Memoirs, she really 
lived on the charities of the charitable and what she euphemis- 
tically termed “contributions from the great.” Colley Cibber ? 
especially befriended her and urged her to push forward the 
Memoirs. But spite of all aid her course was downward. At 
one time she was even imprisoned for debt.’ On her release 
she tried to keep a print and pamphlet shop,‘ but failed. And 
finally she wandered back to Dublin where she died at thirty- 
eight. 

The one book by which Mrs. Pilkington is known is her 
Memoirs, the three volumes of which appeared in 1748. In 
1754 a third edition appeared with an additional volume by 
her son. Shortly after her death there appeared a compilation 
entitled The Celebrated Mrs. Pilkington’s Jests; or, The Cabinet 
of Wit and Humour. In the Memoirs the early happy life in 
Dublin and the later tricks and shifts and intrigues of the 
London life are described with equal frankness. The result was 
a tarnished fame as a woman, but an undisputed reputation as 
a clever writer. When the Earl of Chesterfield wondered that 

1 Mrs. Pilkington: Memorrs, vol. 11, p 249. 

2 Tbid., vol. 11, pp. 84, 224, 231, 234. 3 Tbid., vol. 1, p. 221. 

4 Tbid., vol. 1, p. 240. At the beginning of the eighteenth century we not 
infrequently find notice of women book-sellers. as Elizabeth Janeway of 
Chichester (1697); Eleanor Smith (1697); Elizabeth Whitlocke (1697-99); 
Anne Speed at Three Crowns, Exchange Alley (1705-09); Mrs. Billingsly under 


Royal Exchange (1707); Margaret Coggan (1708-09); Mrs. Appleby of Grave- 
send (1711); Mrs. Small of Deal (1711); ete. (Term Catalogues, passim.) 


230 THE LEARNED LADY 


she could write English so well, she sent word to his lordship 
that Dr. Swift had been her tutor. 

As a literary critic Mrs. Pilkington is especially severe on the 
immorality of some contemporary women writers. Speaking 
of a lady who had refused to subscribe to her book she said: 


She would have purchased my Book sooner than the Bible, to in- 
dulge her private Meditations, Especially if I had the wicked Art of 
painting up Vice in attractive Colours, as too many of our Female 
Writers have done, to the Destruction of Thousands, amongst whom 
Mrs. Manly and Mrs. Haywood deserve the foremost Rank. 

But what extraordimary Passions these Ladies may have experi- 
enced, I know not; far be such Knowledge from a Modest Woman: 
Indeed Mrs. Haywood seems to have dropped her former luscious 
Stile, and, for Variety presents us with the insipid: Her Female Specta- 
tors are a Collection of trite Stories, delivered to us in stale and worn- 
out Phrases: Bless’d Revolution! 

Yet of the two, less dang’rous is th’ Offence 
To tire the Patience, than mislead the Sense. 

And here give me leave to observe, that amongst the Ladies that 
have taken up the Pen, I never met with but two who deserved the 
Name of a Writer; the first is Madam Dacier, whose Learning Mr. 
Pope, while he is indebted to her for all the notes on Homer, endeav- 
oured to depreciate; the second is Mrs. Catherine Philips, the match- 
less Orinda, celebrated by Mr. Cowley, Lord Orrery, and all the Men 
of Genius who lived in her Time. 

I think this incomparable Lady was one of the first Refiners of 
the English Numbers. I cannot, except my own Country-woman 
Mrs. Grierson, find out another female Writer, whose Works are worth 
reading; she indeed had a happy and well-improved Genius! 


The last glimpse we have of Mrs. Pilkington is most effec- 
tive in the dramatic contrast it presents. On Thursday, April 
12, 1750, John Wesley wrote in his Dublin Diary: “I break- 
fasted with one of the Society, and found she had a lodger I 
little thought of. It was the famous Mrs. Pilkington, who soon 
made an excuse for following me up stairs. I talked with her 
seriously about an hour: we then sung, ‘Happy Magdalene.’ 
She appeared to be exceedingly struck: how long the impression 
may last, God knows.” ! 

1 The Heart of John Wesley’s Journal, p. 182. 


IN ENGLAND FROM 1650 TO 1760 231 


Mrs. Mary Davys wrote a comedy produced at Lincoln’s 
Inn Fields in 1716, and a didactic novel, The mrs. Mary 
Reform’d Coquet, which appeared in 1724, Davys (fl. 1725) 
Her Works, in two volumes, appeared in 1725. Miss Morgan 
says that the young lord who is the hero of The Reform’d Co- 
quet, is one of the earliest examples in fiction of “the perfect 
prig of which Sir Charles Grandison is the consummate exam- 
ple.” + She was the wife of the Reverend Peter Davys, master 
of the free school of St. Patrick’s, Dublin, so she came into the 
circle of Swift. Dr. Ewen of Cambridge formerly had thirty-six 
letters from Swift to Mr. and Mrs. Davys. Mr. Davys died 
in 1698 and Mrs. Davys was “left to her own endeavours.” 
In 1713 she wrote to Swift complaining that he had not written 
to her for four years. “I have honestly told her,” he said, “‘it 
was my way never to write to those whom I am never likely to 
see, unless I can serve them, which I cannot her, ete. Davis 
the schoolmaster’s widow.’’? She was not so fortunate as Mrs. 
Grierson and Mrs. Pilkington. 


Mrs. Collyer’s publications were anonymous and she has 
been hardly more than a name in literary his- y,,. Mary 
tory. Recent investigations have, however, Mitchell Collyer 
shown her to be of genuine importance, not (17261762?) 
merely as a writer of considerable ability, but especially as an 
author in whom romantic tendencies found early and well- 
defined statement.* Mrs. Collyer was the wife of Joseph Coll- 
yer, a compiler, translator, and publisher to whom her books 
have sometimes been attributed. Her son was Joseph Collyer, 
an engraver of merit. Mr. Collyer’s income was apparently 
small, for Mrs. Collyer wrote for the support of her family. 


1 Morgan, Charlotte E.: The Rise of the Novel of Manners, p. 70. 

2 Swift, Jonathan: The Journal to Stella, February 21, 1713. 

3 See an article entitled “An early Romantic Novel,”’ by Miss Helen Sard 
Hughes in the Journal of English and Germanic Philology, vol. xv, pp. 564-97. 
In an unpublished manuscript Miss Hughes has made an elaborate study of 
Mrs. Collyer in her relation to her times. I am indebted to this study for many 
suggestions. 


232 THE LEARNED LADY 


In the Dedication to her Death of Abel she said: “Placed by 
the hand of Providence at an humble distance from the Great, 
my cares and pleasures are concentrated within the narrow limits 
of my little family, and it is in order to contribute to the sup- 
port and education of my children, I have taken up my pen.” 

The seven works attributed to Mrs. Collyer fall between 
1743 and 1763. It is unnecessary to consider these works here 
in detail except so far as may serve to indicate their historical 
significance. For this purpose we may take up first the last of 
her books, the translations from the German, for it is on these 
that her modicum of fame has rested. When Mrs. Collyer trans- 
lated Gesner’s Der Tod Abels in 1761 and began Klopstock’s 
Messiah the year after, she was a pioneer in a new kind of learn- 
ing. The professed linguists seldom included German im their 
list, and German literature was practically unknown.'! Mr. 
Haney, in his study of ‘German Literature in England before 
1790,” gives William Taylor of Norwich as “the first literary 
critic to attempt a systematic introduction of German litera- 
ture into England,” and Mr. Taylor’s period of literary activ- 
ity did not begin until 1790. Of the sporadic translations be- 
fore that period, aside from scientific and theological works and 
a few hymns, Mr. Haney cites but two anterior to Mrs. Collyer’s 
Death of Abel. There were few more popular works in the 
eighteenth century than this translation. There were eighteen 
editions in twenty-one years, and many later editions. It satis- 
fied alike the pious reader and the lover of fiction. The Quar- 
terly Review for 1814? says: “No book of foreign growth has 
ever become so popular in England as the Death of Abel. Those 
publishers whose market lies among that portion of the people 
who are below what is called the public, but form a far more 
numerous class, include it regularly among their ‘sacred class- 
ics’: it has been repeatedly printed at country presses with 


1 See article by Mr. John Louis Haney on “German Literature in England 
before 1790,” in Americana Germanica, vol. tv, pp. 130-54; and an article on 
“The Influence of Solomon Gesner upon English Literature,” by Miss Bertha 
Reed, in German American Annals, vol. vu (1905), vol. vir (1906). 

? Article v1, vol. x1, p. 78. 


IN ENGLAND FROM 1650 TO 1760 233 


worn types and on coarse paper; and it is found at country 
fairs, and in the little shops of remote towns almost as certainly 
as the Pilgrim’s Progress and Robinson Crusoe.” Miss Hughes 
quotes numerous other testimonies to the same effect. 

This remarkable popularity was due, of course, to the orig- 
inal author rather than to the translator. Mrs. Collyer’s ver- 
sion received high contemporary praise, but according to mod- 
ern ideas it would be counted loose and inaccurate. Miss Reed 
characterizes the style as unnatural and affected, and she 
thinks that while the translation made Gesner widely known, it 
in reality injured his fame. But the excellence of the work, or 
its defects, are not so significant in a study of Mrs. Collyer as 
are the facts that she was sufficiently well trained in German 
to give even a fairly adequate version, and that she should be 
the first to present a German poet of the new school to an 
English public. 

Mrs. Collyer died before completing her translation of Klop- 
stock and her husband carried it to a conclusion. He said in 
his Preface that his wife’s fatal illness was brought on by her 
agitation of mind in connection with her work on the Death 
of Abel. 

Mrs. Collyer’s Christmas Boz is another instance of pioneer 
work. Its full descriptive title is A Christmas Bor, Consisting 
of Moral Stories, adapted to the Capacities of Little Children and 
calculated to give them early impressions of Piety and Virtue. 
Two volumes. Adorned with cuts. The Christmas Box and Miss 
Fielding’s Litile Female Academy appeared in 1749, five years 
after Newbery’s first child’s book, The Little Pretty Pocket 
Book, of 1744. In 1745 he brought out three volumes of The 
Circles of the Sciences, and in 1751-52 The Lilliputian Maga- 
zine. Thus a new class of literature was definitely started, 
with Mrs. Collyer and Miss Fielding as important contribu- 
tors to the spread of the idea at its inception.! 

Two of Mrs. Collyer’s novels are translations from the 


1 See article by F. J. Harvey Darton on children’s books, in Cambridge His- 
tory of Literature, vol. x1, chap. xv1. 


234 THE LEARNED LADY 


French, and are of slight importance in comparison with her 
one original novel the full title of which is Felicia to Charlotte: 
Being Letters from a Young Lady in the Country, to her Friend 
in Town. Containing A Series of the most interesting Events, 
interspersed with Moral Reflections ; chiefly tending to prove that 
the Seeds of Virtue are implanted in the Mind of Every Reason- 
able Being. Volume one appeared in 1744 and a second volume 
in 1749. Miss Hughes in her analysis of this novel ! points out 
various elements that forecast ideas not dominant till some 
decades later. It was a novel of purpose, written for ethical and 
religious ends, and as such antedates John Buncle by twelve 
years. It is also a novel of feeling. Its hero, Lucius, must wait 
for Sterne before he can find his true kin. The courtship of 
Lucius is punctuated with sighs and tears, with the over- 
wrought emotions of a sensitive heart. Steele’s Conscious 
Lovers offers an early sentimental parallel, but the type was 
not fully developed till in the seventies. The first volume ends 
with the marriage of Felicia and Lucius. In the second vol- 
ume the happy pair, now quite sane and sensible, are able to 
discuss with fluency and precision their ideas on the nurture 
and education of children. This volume was thus a pedagogic 
romance of the sort that became popular after Rousseau. 

The most interesting of all the new ideas brought forward by 
Felicia and Lucius is their love of nature and of country life. 
They choose the country as a place of residence and justify 
their choice on rational grounds. And Mrs. Collyer has a sur- 
prising fullness and ardor of description, and a sincere joy in 
nature not equaled in fiction before John Bunele (1756-66), 
and she is a decade earlier.? It was only in poetry or in philo- 
sophical theory that Mrs. Collyer could have found sources for 


1 Hughes, Helen Sard: Mary Mitchell Collyer: A Romanticist of the Mid- 
Century, chap. m1 (unpublished manuscript). 

2 In my study, Nature in English Poetry between Pope and Wordsworth, in a 
brief account of fiction from this point of view, I gave John Buncle as the ear- 
liest writer of fiction to make abundant use of nature. It is interesting to 
find Mrs. Collyer, not only antedating him, but excelling him in accuracy and 
fullness. 


IN ENGLAND FROM 1650 TO 1760 235 


her literary use of nature. Spenser, Milton, and Thomson were 
well known to her and they doubtless influenced her. 

Connected with this love of nature are Mrs. Collyer’s ideas 
on gardening. When she and Lucius bought their estate it was 
in the formal style, but they at once changed it to make it ap- 
pear as much like nature as possible. In this Mrs. Collyer was 
not entirely original, for the Spectator and the Guardian, Pope, 
Switzer, and Batty Langley had decried the stiff regularity 
of the formal garden, and Kent’s great gardens came be- 
tween 1730 and 1748. But Mrs. Collyer promptly took up 
the new ideas and she ranks among their early defenders. 

Mrs. Collyer is very interesting because she showed herself 
in these various ways so sensitive to new ideas. She seemed to 
know what was im the air even before it had had any but the 
most casual expression. She sat down very modestly and with 
much trepidation to write anonymous translations and novels 
for the support of her family, but she was, quite unconsciously 
it may be, treading the path of the pioneer. 


Sarah Fielding’s first and most important novel, The Adven- 
tures of David Simple in search of a Faithful Sarah Fielding 
Friend (1744), received extraordinary commen- (710-1768) 
dation from the two contemporary authors whose judgments 
might be counted authoritative, Henry Fielding and Samuel 
Richardson. Fielding’s satiric picture of Mrs. Western in Tom 
Jones is more than offset by his utterances in connection with 
his sister Sarah’s books. When David Simple appeared, Joseph 
Andrews had been two years before the public, and it was 
natural that her popular little book should be attributed to 
Fielding. But when the second edition came out (also 1744) he 
took occasion to disavow his supposed authorship, and likewise 
to commend the book. 


A third, and indeed the strongest, reason which hath drawn me into 
print, is to do justice to the real and sole author of this little book; 
who, notwithstanding the many excellent observations dispersed 
through it, and the deep knowledge of human nature it discovers, is a 


236 THE LEARNED LADY 


young woman; one so nearly and dearly allied to me, in the highest 
friendship as well as relation, that if she had wanted any assistance of 
mine I would have been as ready to have given it to her as I would have 
been just to my word in owning it; but, in reality, two or three hints 
which arose on the reading it, and some little direction as to the con- 
duct of the second volume, much the greater part of which I never 
saw till in print, were all the aid she received from me. Indeed, I be- 
lieve there are few books in the world so absolutely the author’s own 
as this.... 

And as the faults of this work want very little excuse, so its beau- 
ties want as little recommendation; though I will not say but they 
may sometimes stand in need of being pointed out to the generality of 
readers. For as the merit of this work consists in a vast penetration 
into human nature, a deep and profound discernment of all the mazes, 
windings, and labyrinths, which perplex the heart of man to such a 
degree that he is himself often incapable of seeing through them; and 
as this is the greatest, noblest, and rarest of all the talents which con- 
stitute a genius; so a much larger share of this talent is necessary even 
to recognize these discoveries when they are laid before us than fall 
to the share of a common reader... . 

As to the characters here described, I shall repeat the saying of one 
of the greatest men in this age, — “That they were as wonderfully 
drawn by the writer as they were by Nature herself.” There are many 
strokes in Orguiel, Spatter, Varnish, Levif, the Balancer, and some 
others which would have shined in the pages of Theophrastus, Horace, 
or La Bruyére. Nay, there are some touches which I will venture to 
say might have done honour to the pencil of the immortal Shake- 
speare himself.! 


For a continuation of David Simple in 1747,? Fielding wrote 
a dedication and five letters. In this Preface he gave his 
opinion on learning for women: 


The objection to the sex of the author hardly requires an answer; 
it will be chiefly advanced by those who derive their opinion of women, 
very unfairly, from the fine ladies of the age; whereas, if the behavior 
of their counterparts, the beaux, was to denote the understanding of 
men, I apprehend the conclusion would be in favour of the women, 
without making a compliment to that sex. I can, of my own knowl- 
edge and from my own acquaintance, bear testimony to the possibility 
of those examples which history gives of women eminent for the high- 


1 Fielding, Henry: Complete Works (edited by Thomas Roscoe), p. 630. 
2 Familiar Letters between the Characters of David Simple. (1747). 


IN ENGLAND FROM 1650 TO 1760 237 


est endowments and faculties of mind. I shall only add an answer to 
the same objection, relating to David Simple, given by a lady of very 
high rank, whose quality, is however, less an honour to her than her 
understanding. ‘“‘So far,” said she, “from doubting David Simple 
to be the performance of a woman, I am well convinced it could not 
have been written by a man.” + 


Miss Fielding’s own views on the woman question are slightly 
indicated in this story. In the course of his peregrinations 
David Simple meets the charming Miss Cynthia, who tells 
him the story of her life and leads him to reflect upon the irri- 
tation and unhappiness which result from the undue restric- 
tions imposed upon women. Miss Cynthia had always been 
subject to repression. Whenever she asked questions she was 
told, such things were not proper for girls of her age to know. 
She was not allowed to read, for Miss Cynthia must not inquire 
too far into things lest it should turn her brain. She was to 
mind her needlework and such things as are useful to women. 
Reading and poring over books would never get her a husband. 
Cynthia’s restlessness doubiless well represents the state of 
mind of many a contemporary girl eager for learning, but not 
able to escape from the feminine conventions. 

In 1749 Miss Fielding published a work quite new in form 
and intention. It was entitled The Governess; Or, The Little 
Female Academy. Calculated for the Entertainment and Instruc- 
tion of Young Ladies in their Education. It was so popular that 
a seventh edition appeared in 1760. This little book represents 
the happenings of nine days in the school of Mrs. Teachum, a 
gentlewoman who taught young ladies “in Reading, Writing, 
Working, and in all proper Forms of Behavior.” The oldest 
of her nine young ladies was fourteen, the youngest was six, 
and the others between six and twelve. The book was profess- 
edly written, not for the Mrs. Teachums of the age, but for 
little girls under twelve. And the instruction embodied was 
thrown into story form to make it more acceptable to young 
readers. I know of no earlier similar attempt. Such books as 


1 Fielding, Henry: Complete Works (ed. Roscoe), p. 632. 


238 THE LEARNED LADY 


had been written for children were serious and religious in tone. 
But Miss Fielding’s book was lively and entertaining. Each 
little girl told the history of her life and analyzed her adventures 
and emotions, particularly her faults and their outcome, in true 
romance style. But all is kept pretty near to a child’s under- 
standing. And there are some occurrences — as a fracas in 
which the genteel young ladies “fought and scratched and tore 
like young cats,” for the possession of an apple redder and 
bigger than its companions in the basket, a collation at a dairy 
farm, sewing-parties in an arbor with Miss Jenny Peace, the 
fourteen-year old girl, as story-teller and as umpire in all dis- 
putes, that must have had extraordinary charm for young 
misses who had never before seen even a semblance of their 
own lives in print. 

Miss Fielding’s other works are of less significance except for 
her translation of Xenophon’s Memoirs of Socrates ; with the 
Defence of Socrates before his Judges (1762), which indicates 
a knowledge of Greek more exact than was common in her day. 

The most interesting fact in Miss Fielding’s life is her close 
friendship with Richardson. She was one of the most ardent 
admirers of his work. She says of Clarissa: “‘ When I read of her 
I am all sensation; my heart glows; I am overwhelmed; my 
only vent is tears. . . . Often have I reflected on my own vanity 
in daring but to touch the hem of her garment.” In 1756 
Richardson wrote to her: 


Why did you not tell Lady Bradshaigh . . . that you were my much- 
esteemed Sally Fielding, the author of David Simple? She knows my 
opinion of you, and of your writing powers. ... I have just gone 
through your two vols. of Letters. Have re-perused them with great 
pleasure, and found many new beauties in them. What a knowledge 
of the human heart! Well might a critical judge of writing say, as he 
did to me, that your late brother’s knowledge of it was not (fine writer 
as he was) comparable to yours. His was but as the knowledge of the 
outside of a clock-work machine, while your’s was that of all the finer 
springs and movements of the inside.! 


1 The Correspondence of Samuel Richardson (ed. Barbauld), vol. u, pp. 
101-05. 


IN ENGLAND FROM 1650 TO 1760 239 


The most popular work by Miss Fielding was The Little 
Female Academy. David Simple, to be sure, went through two 
editions in 1744. But the indications of contemporary recogni- 
tion are not at all commensurate with the praise from her 
brother and Richardson and other high authorities. Of for- 
eign appreciation of her work there are more proofs. David 
Simple was translated into German! in 1746 and into French 
in 1755,2 and The Countess of Grafin was translated into 
German in 1761.5 The French translator of David Simple com- 
mented on the approbation générale which this romance had 
found.‘ 


Charlotte Rumsey was the daughter of Colonel James 
Rumsey, Lieutenant-Governor of New York. Charlotte Lennox 
At fifteen she was sent to England as the pro- 1720-1804) 
tégé and probable heiress of an aunt. But the aunt became 
insane, and the girl was left penniless. The only facts that 
emerge concerning the difficult years before her marriage to 
Mr. Lennox in about 1748 have to do with her very mediocre 
career as an actress. 

Except for a volume of poems in 1747, it was not till after her 
marriage that Mrs. Lennox came forward prominently as an 
author. Her two-volume novel, The Life of Harriet Stuart, 
Written by Herself, appeared in 1751. But in literary circles 
she was evidently well known before this, for Johnson was her 
especial friend. When her manuscript was ready for publica- 
tion, he arranged a celebration at his Club. The festivities were 


1 Die Begebenheiten David Simpels, oder Erzéhlung von dessen Reisen durch 
die Stddte London und Westminster, am einen wahrhaftigen Freund zu suchen. 
Geschrieben durch ein Frauenzimmer. Ubersetzt durch M. A. Wodarch. (Ham- 
burg, in der Hertelischen Handlung im Dom. 1746.) 

2 Le véritable Ami, ou la Vie de David Simple. Traduit del’ Anglois. (Amster- 
dam, 1755.) 

3 Geschichte der Grafin von Dellwyn; von Fielding’s Schwester, der Verfasserin 
des David Simple. Aus dem Englischen iibersetzt. (Leipzig, in der Weid- 
mannschen Handling. 1761.) 

4 Pliigge, Georg: Miss Sarah Fielding als Romanschriftstellerin (Inaugural- 
Dissertation, Leipzig). 


240 THE LEARNED LADY 


to last all night. Mrs. Lennox was ceremoniously crowned with 
laurel, and there was a magnificent hot apple-pie stuck with 
bay leaves.! This first novel is probably in part autobiograph- 
ical inasmuch as the heroine, Harriet Stuart, is the daughter of 
a man of high official rank in America, and goes to England at 
fifteen to live with an aunt who becomes insane and leaves her 
penniless. But this is merely a slight framework for a series 
of love adventures. Miss Stuart’s wit and beauty gather about 
her lovers of all varieties, army officers, sea-captains, pirates, 
merchants; and the alarming crises of her fate put her into close 
competition with Clarissa Harlowe herself. America, France, 
and England are the far-separated scenes of Miss Stuart’s trials 
and victories, the emphasis being on her life in America. 
There would be a chance for some interesting local color in this 
representation of mid-eighteenth-century life in New York if 
the young lady could have spared a moment from her adven- 
tures to observe her surroundings. An Indian encampment, a 
visit to a fort, an escapade to a “farm,” a midnight row on the 
Hudson, are mentioned, but with no comment. Towns and 
houses, roads, rivers, and seas, are but localities for love scenes, 
means of transit from one episode to another. The story is told 
with a deft manipulation of details and an easy fluency that 
would seem to indicate something of a previous literary appren- 
ticeship. At any rate, in this novel she had found her medium, 
and she was soon ready with a tale that gave her genuine dis- 
tinction. The Female Quixote appeared in 1752 with a Dedi- 
cation written by Johnson, and it was reviewed by him in The 
Gentleman’s Magazine for March. He said of it: “Mr. Field- 
ing, however emulous of Cervantes, and jealous of a rival, 
acknowledges in his paper of the 24th, that in many instances, 
this copy excels the original, and though he has no connection 
with the author, he concludes his encomium on the work, by 
earnestly recommending it as a most extraordinary, and most 
excellent performance. ‘It is,’ says he, ‘a work of true humour, 
and cannot fail of giving a rational, as well as a very pleasing 
1 Hawkins, Sir John: Life of Samuel Johnson, p. 286. 


IN ENGLAND FROM 1650 TO 1760 241 


amusement, to a sensible reader, who will at once be instructed, 
and highly diverted.’” 1 Johnson’s name is still more inti- 
mately connected with the book, for he wrote the chapter which 
has the heading, “Being in the author’s opinion, the best chap- 
ter in this history.”2 Harriet Stuart reads like an echo of 
Richardson, but in The Female Quixote Mrs. Lennox strikes 
an original note. Comedy had already, a generation earlier, in 
Biddy Tipkin, made sport of the romance-reading girls of the 
day. But the satire was new in fiction. And it was carried out 
with a fullness and accuracy of details possible only to one who 
had herself been a traveler in enchanted realms. Mrs. Lennox 
must at some time have been as devoted to French fiction as 
even Dorothy Osborne and Mrs. Pepys in the preceding cen- 
tury. Her story is long-drawn-out and improbable, but the 
cleverness with which Arabella and Lucy parody Don Quixote 
and Sancho Panza gives the book a notable place among the 
English followers of Cervantes. The Spiritual Quixote (1773), 
a satire on the Methodists, and The Benevolent Quixote (1791), 
a satire on mawkish ideas of charity, are inferior in vivacity and 
interest to Mrs. Lennox’s work. 

In 1753-54 Mrs. Lennox brought out Shakespeare Illus- 
trated ; or, Novels and Histories on which the Plays are... 
founded, collected and translated, an uncritical piece of work 
according to present standards, but historically significant as 
one of the earliest attempts to present Shakespeare’s sources.® 
A two-volume novel, Henrietia, in 1758, was dramatized as a 
didactic comedy under the title The Sister, and brought out at 
Covent Garden in 1769. Though Miss Mattocks played the 
chief part, and the Prologue and Epilogue were respectively 
by Colman and Goldsmith, the play met with but moderate 


1 The Gentleman’s Magazine, vol. xxi, p. 146. 

2 Vol. u, p. 251. This chapter was reprinted entire in The Gentleman’s 
Magazine, January, 1841, p. 44. It was Miss Mitford who pointed out John- 
son’s authorship of this chapter. See Nichols: Literary Anecdotes, vol. vu, 
p. 161. 

3 Johnson, Samuel: Works (ed. Murphy), vol. 1, p. 58. 

* Genest: Some Account of the English Stage, vol. v, p. 241. 


242 THE LEARNED LADY 


success. In 1760-61 Mrs. Lennox edited The Ladies Museum, 
in which were illustrated articles on natural history written 
especially for ladies, philosophical discussions simplified for 
ladies, and continued stories of the love-adventure type evi- 
dently calculated for the same tastes. The most interesting 
character drawing is that of an incipient Mrs. Malaprop in 
the person of a Mrs. Gibbons. 

If any annals were extant of Mrs. Lennox’s life we should 
doubtless find records of continuous study. At least we con- 
stantly get new proofs of her learning. The Memoirs of M. de 
Bethune, Duke of Sully, in three volumes in 1756,! The Me- 
motrs of the Countess Berci, in two volumes in the same year, 
and Memoirs for the History of Madame de Maintenon, in 
1757, show not only her mastery of French, but very steady 
application to intellectual tasks. In 1759 she had what might 
be considered her crowning honor as a learned lady. She was 
chosen to edit a translation of Brumoy’s Greek Theatre. In 
collaboration with her were Dr. Johnson, Dr. Gregory Sharpe, 
Dr. Grainger, and John Bourrya, men of recognized standing 
as scholars.? 

Mrs. Lennox lived forty-four years after the close of the 
period under discussion. But she belongs properly in the first 
half of the century because all her important work comes be- 
tween 1750 and 1760. After a decade of exceptional literary 
activity she sinks into obscurity. In 1775 Dr. Johnson assisted 
in preparing proposals for the publication of her collected works, 
in three quarto volumes, by subscription. Had this plan been 
carried out there would doubtless have been preserved much 
interesting information concerning the social and literary life 
of an eminently successful mid-eighteenth-century bas bleu. 
From the facts at hand it is easy to see that she was counte- 

1 Reprinted in 1778 and 1810. A new edition in four volumes in 1856 by 
Bohn announced that the text had been collated with the French “and with 
such corrections as the ingenious Translator herself would have made on a 
careful] revision of her translation.”” Johnson reviewed this work favorably in 


The Literary Magazine for 1756. 
2 Johnson, Samuel: Works (ed. Murphy), vol. 1, p. 1. 


IN ENGLAND FROM 1650 TO 1760 243 


nanced by some of the best minds of her time. Her portrait 
was painted by Reynolds and engraved by Bartolozzi. 


In 1770 Miss Elizabeth Carter gathered together and pub- 
lished the Works of her friend Miss Catharine 4y:.< catha- 
Talbot. There had been considerable urgency tine Talbot 
on the part of Miss Talbot’s friends to secure 722-1779 
such a publication during her lifetime, but she was too timid, 
and, though The Green Book in which she kept sketches and 
fragments, and “the considering drawer,’’ constantly received 
accessions, her modest opinion of her own worth and an exag- 
gerated dread of general criticism held her back from the ordeal 
of the printed page. But when the Works finally appeared they 
achieved immediate popularity. The Reflections on the Seven 
Days of the Week went through three editions the first year 
and there was a tenth edition in 1784. Of the Works the eighth 
edition appeared within forty years. The extravagant contem- 
porary estimate of Miss Talbot as a moral and religious writer, 
as a supporter of Christian ethics, can awake only surprise in 
the modern reader. Even a reader whose mind has been 
subdued to second-class eighteenth-century didacticism finds 
Miss Talbot’s moralizings pale and anemic. But when we 
read her letters we come upon a much more attractive and 
vital personality. A letter descriptive of Mr. Browne Willis 
and his four daughters shows a gay spirit and a talent for 
minute observation and social satire of the Jane Austen type.! 

From the age of five Miss Talbot lived in the family of Mr. 
Secker, Bishop of Oxford and later Archbishop of Canterbury. 
Her spiritual and mental training were constantly under the 
supervision of the Archbishop, who loved her devotedly. And 
her education is particularly interesting as an illustration of 
the desultory and fragmentary character of the intellectual 
discipline provided for a girl of active mind, even in one of the 
best families. One advantage was hers from early life, and that 
was her association with the learned guests at the deanery 

1 Nichols: Anecdotes of Bowyer, p. 248. 


244 THE LEARNED LADY 


where there was always an atmosphere of scholarly and serious 
discussion. And her position as a member of the Archbishop’s 
family not only gave her entrance into the best social circles, 
but made it incumbent on her, as hostess or guest, to cultivate 
the amenities of life. But she did comparatively little in the 
way of exact studies. She was proficient in French and Italian, 
but she knew no Hebrew or Greek and but little Latin. She 
had tutors in geography and astronomy and found satisfaction 
in the conceptions opened up to her by these subjects. Of her 
drawing and painting for which she had considerable repute she 
wrote in 1745: 


T learn of a good master but am much too impatient and too vola- 
tile to give half the time and application that are necessary to make 
anything tolerable, yet I undertake large pictures, like an inconsider- 
ate goose as I am, and then have the mortification to leave them un- 
finished. This is actually the case with a fine holy family of Carlo 
Maraiti’s, which I began last winter (and two or three other pictures 
at the same time) in crayons, and which must now want the perfecting 
touches till February or March. At the same time I had undertaken 
to learn perspective of Mr. Wright. I hope from all these things I 
shall in time learn discretion at least, and not to be thus perpetually 
aiming de prendre la lune avec les dents. 


This letter was written when she was twenty-five. A Dia- 
logue written at eighteen gives an earlier glimpse of her chaotic 
student life. This Dialogue is entitled “Enquiry how far 
Practice has kept pace with Intention.” 


What have you done, this Summer? 

Rode, and laughed, and fretted. 

What did you intend to do? 

To learn geography, mathematics; decimal fractions and good 
humour: to work a screen, draw copies of two or three fine prints, and 
read abundance of history: to improve my memory and restrain my 
fancy: to lay out my time to the best advantage: to be happy myself, 
and make everybody else so. To read Voltaire’s Newton, Whiston’s 
Euclid, and Tillotson’s Sermons. 

Have you read nothing? 


1 The Works of the Late Miss Catharine Talbot, vol. 1, p. 98. 


IN ENGLAND FROM 1650 TO 1760 245 


Yes: some of the Sermons; Mrs. Rowe’s Works; The Tale of a Tub; 
a book of Dr. Watt’s; L’Histoire du Ciel; Milton, and abundance of 
plays and idle books. 


Archbishop Secker’s household presents an agreeable picture 
of lettered leisure. During the evenings there are long sessions 
known as “the family readings.” In 1751 they are reading 
Pope’s Works, evidently in the recent nine-volume edition by 
Warburton. They are filled with mingled pride and shame as 
they reflect on his genius and his failings. They have read Mrs. 
Cockburn’s defense of him and they love her for her zealous 
championship. But Pope is not their idol. All their hero wor- 
ship, at least all of Miss Talbot’s hero worship, goes to Richard- 
son. She cannot subscribe to any criticism of him. In a dis- 
cussion of one of his essays in The Rambler, Miss Carter’s 
strictures bring a spirited protest from Miss Talbot: 

He does not pretend to give a scheme (not an entire scheme) of 
female education, only to say how when well educated they should 
behave, in opposition to the racketing life of the Ranelagh-education 
misses of these our days. Do read it over again a little candidly. How 
can you ever imagine that the author of Clarissa has not an idea of 
what women may be, and ought to be. 


Richardson and Miss Talbot were personal friends and he 
thought so highly of her judgment that when he contemplated 
creating the character of a perfect gentleman as the hero of Sir 
Charles Grandison, he consulted her concerning the traits of 
this superman. She in turn consulted Miss Carter, and when 
the book appeared she wrote to Miss Carter in great glee: 

Oh! Miss Carter, did you ever call Pigmalion a fool, for making an 
image and falling in love with it . . . and do you know that you and I 
are two Pigmalionesses? Did not Mr. Richardson ask us for some 
traits of his good man’s character? And did we not give him some? 
And has not he gone and put these and his own charming ideas into 
a book and formed a Sir Charles Grandison? 


Beside the evening readings there were leisurely literary pic- 
nics, where by some riverside they drank tea and read Madame 
de Sévigné’s Letters and Miss Fielding. They read Mrs. Cock- 


246 THE LEARNED LADY 


burn and Mrs. Jones, and Mrs. Lennox, even the Memoirs of 
Mrs. Constantia Phillips, and the early verse of Miss Mulso. 
There is time for slow and meditative reading, and for inter- 
ested comment and question, back and forth, by letter. It was 
a normal, unpretentious, and stimulating way to gain an 
acquaintance with contemporary literature. And the great 
classics were read, in translations, in the same manner. To 
read with a learned man like Archbishop Secker was in itself 
an education. 

It is thus that Miss Talbot had all the environment of educa- 
tion with none of its disciplinary work. By twenty she was 
known as “the celebrated Miss Talbot” without any basis of 
actual achievement. She seems to have embodied an eight- 
eenth-century ideal. Her religious beliefs were beyond cavil, 
her conduct irreproachable. She had an alert mind, wide inter- 
ests, and considerable information on varied topics. She had a 
high social rank, and she recognized social obligations. She was 
affable, approachable, attentive. She had enough learning to 
give her distinction, but not enough even to threaten pedantry. 
And she exerted all her talents in home and church circles. She 
was not a Letitia Pilkington writing scandal for daily bread, 
nor a Mary Astell protesting against the tyranny of man, nor 
an Elizabeth Elstob delving in unfashionable research. She 
awakened no antagonisms. She had the success and happiness 
that come from being entirely in accord with one’s environment.! 


A few mediocre poetesses at the end of the period may 
Mary Leapor be cursorily noticed because in their own day 
(1722-1746) they attracted some attention. In Poems by 
Eminent Ladies Mary Leapor (1722-1746)? is given more 


1 See The Gentleman’s Magazine, vol. xt1v (1774), p. 376. Ibid. (1772), vol. 
XLU, pp. 135, 257. (Her character by Mrs. Duncomb.) Nichols: Literary An- 
ecdotes, vol. 1x, pp. 766-69. (Quotations from the Reverend Weeden Butler’s 
Memoirs of Bishop Hildesley, Letter by Dr. Rundle, Letter by Duchess of 
Somerset.) 

2 In 1748, in accordance with her dying request, her poems were published by 
subscription for her father’s benefit, under the title Poems on Several Occasions, 


IN ENGLAND FROM 1650 TO 1760 247 


space than any other author. And in these decorous pages she 
stands out as a distinct individuality. She is the daughter of 
a gardener, but no such elegant creature as Tennyson’s Rose. 
She has work to do indoors and out, and her life is eminently 
prosaic. She has a plain face, an awkward figure, and non- 
descript clothes. But she has no quarrel with fate or her mir- 
ror. She seems to have been a shrewd, sensible young woman, 
Vivacious, quick-witted, with no illusions, no sentimentality, 
no dreams. In her minor fashion she was a satirist of the Pope 
school. Of the seventeen books in the little library she had 
painfully gathered, the ones she valued most were by Pope 
and Dryden. She manages the heroic couplet with considerable 
correctness and ease and she follows Pope’s method of illus- 
trating a topic with verse portraits. Her closely studied coun- 
try scenes suggest that Gay’s Shepherd’s Week must have 
been among her books. Considering her youth and contracted. 
way of life, she had a remarkable insight into social foibles, but 
she had none of Swift’s scorn of the human race nor of Pope’s 
personal virulence. Her outlook on life was detached, tolerant, 
and amused. 


In 1755, when Miss Mary Jones was included in Eminent 
Ladies, she was still living, and therefore the miss Mary 
date of her birth was not given. But the edi- Jones (4. 1755) 
torial comment says that Oxford was her home, and “hence 
deservedly called the Seat of the Muses.’’ Miss Jones corre- 
sponded with a maid of honor, had many intimacies among 
the nobility, and rejoiced in the friendship of Her Royal 
Highness, the Princess of Orange. Her poems had, there- 
fore, especial opportunities to make their way. But the modest 
author long resisted the suggested publication of her works. 
She felt that these “‘accidental ramblings of her thoughts into 
rhyme” were of too slight value to be preserved in print. But 


by the late Mrs. Leapor of Brackley in Northamptonshire. Published for the 
Benefit of the Author’s Father. 800. Price 5s. Vol. 2d and last appeared later 
at the same price. 


248 THE LEARNED LADY 


she finally, in 1752, came forward with a volume which was 
greeted with high praise. The Monthly Review for 1752 began 
an Appreciation of her in the following flattering fashion: “To 
the applauded names of the ingenious Molly Leapor, and the 
truly admirable Mrs. Cockburn (see Review, the preceding 
volumes) we have now the pleasure to add that of Mrs. Jones; 
whose name will not be less an honour to her country, and to 
the republic of letters, than her amiable life and manner are to 
her own sex: to that sex whose natural charms alone are found 
sufficient to attract our tenderest regards; but which, when 
joined to those uncommon accomplishments and virtues this 
lady is mistress of, so justly command our highest admiration, 
and most ardent esteem.” The Review considers her com- 
positions in verse as “‘superior to those of any other of our 
female writers since Catherine Phillips” and her prose as 
“superior to any pieces of the kind that our own country has 
produced, from the pen of a woman.” She was of a gay and 
vivacious temperament, and social by nature. Her interest in 
her friends’ affairs brought forth many occasional poems. A 
spider frightens Charlot, Mrs. East’s canary bird dies, a hare 
is sent to Mrs. Clayton, Lady Beauclerk desires an elegy in 
memory of her husband, — each incident receives poetical 
commemoration. Epistles on Patience, Desire, and Hope are 
addressed to her friends among the nobility. 

Like Miss Leapor she is a satellite of Pope. She has studied 
him to such effect that phrases and whole lines from his poems 
occur in her verse, and to the best of her ability she copies his 
style. Her Epistle to Lady Bowyer is throughout curiously 
reminiscent of his Epistle to Dr. Arbuthnot. Her verse essays 
are loosely constructed amplifications of Pope’s aphorism 
which she transforms into ‘‘ Whatever is, is Best.” 


Mrs. Madan (“formerly Miss Cowper’’) was living in 1755. 
Mrs. Madan She was reputed to have fine talents for poetry, 
(fl. 1755) an “extraordinary genius,” in fact, but she 
could never be brought to publish any of her poems. She is 


IN ENGLAND FROM 1650 TO 1760 249 


therefore known now only by her translation of Abelard’s 
Letter to Eloisa, a kind of companion piece to Pope’s Eloisa 
to Abelard. It is smooth, well-expressed, and shows some 
sympathetic understanding of Abelard’s emotions. 


Miss Mary Masters, a native of Ottley near Leeds in 
Yorkshire, had an early taste for poetry, but Miss Mary 
she was “always brow-beat and discounte- Masters (4. 1755) 
nanced by her parents.”! The chief poems by her in Em- 
tnent Ladies are trite paraphrases of the Psalms and need not 
detain us. 

In 1755 she brought out by subscription Familiar Letters and 
Poems on Several Occasions. The letters between her as Maria 
and various friends in 1755 are of considerable interest. The 
young ladies discuss, in the main, questions of love and mar- 
riage, but some letters at the end of the book concern them- 
selves with the relative powers of men and women. “Miss ay 
sustains the conventional view that they differ fundamentally, 
men having more strength of judgment, and women quicker 
apprehension. She says that no woman has been great as an 
orator, that the best women poets are inferior to Milton, and 
that men have always managed the government. Maria main- 
tains that the difference is not in the faculties themselves, but 
in the training of the faculties and in opportunities for their use. 
She cites a young lady of twenty-two in France who had been 
admitted to the Academy of Science. And one entire letter is a 
eulogy of Italian learned ladies. She gives the name of Clelia 
Borromeo of Milan, counted by the Italians “the greatest 
mathematician their country has produced, except Galileo and 
Manfredi”; Gabriella Agnesi, also of Milan, skilled in alge- 
braic computations; Countess Tullia Francesca Bizetti Im- 
bonati, a “Lyrick Poetess,” another Milanese lady; Laura 
Catterina Bassi, Professor of Experimental Philosophy in the 
University of Bologna, and many others. Maria is the earliest 
apologist for the advancement of women to make such defi- 

1 See Familiar Letters, p. 52. 


250 THE LEARNED LADY 


nite and intelligent use of the learned Italian ladies as cor- 
roborative illustrations.! 


1 “Maria” has made some mistakes in names, but her general accuracy is 
attested by a reference to Mozans: Woman in Science. The eighteenth century 
was a period of great triumph for learned Italian women. Of the four chief 
women, Laura Bassi, Anna Manzolini, Maria Agnesi, Clotilda Tambroni, the 
first three had attained to fame before 1755 when Miss Masters’s book ap- 
peared. Maria Agnesi (1718-1808) was a European celebrity by the time she 
was twenty. “‘M. Charles de Brosses, in his Lettres Familiéres écrites de l Italie 
en 1739 et 1740, speaks of Agnesi in terms that recall the marvellous stories 
which are related of Admirable Crichton and Cico della Mirandola. ‘She ap- 
peared to me,’ he tells us, ‘something more stupendous — wna cosa piu stupenda 
— than the Duomo of Milan.’ Having been invited to a conversazione for the 
purpose of meeting this wonderful woman, the learned Frenchman found her 
to be ‘a young lady about eighteen or twenty.’ She was surrounded by ‘about 
thirty people — many of them from different parts of Europe.’ The discussion 
turned on various questions of mathematics and natural philosophy.” The as- 
tonishment excited by her knowledge of these abstruse subjects was increased 
by her command of classical Latin which she spoke with purity, care, and accu- 
racy. When the conversation became general she spoke to each person in the 
language of his own country. At about thirty Maria Agnesi brought out her 
great work,-.a treatise in two large volumes on the differential and integral 
calculus. ‘‘It would be impossible to describe the sensation it produced in the 
learned world. Everybody talked about it; everybody admired the profound 
learning of the author, and acclaimed her: ‘Il portento del sesso, unico al 
Mondo’ —the portent of her sex, unique in the world.” (Mozans: Woman in 
Science, pp. 143-53.) 

Laura Caterina Bassi (1711-78) would take rank with learned women of any 
age or nation. At twenty-one she took part in a public disputation on philos- 
ophy with some of the most distinguished scholars of the time as her opponents. 
The brilliancy of her success on this occasion led to a request that she should 
present herself as candidate for the doctorate in philosophy. This was a still 
more imposing ceremony. It was held in the Communal Palace which was mag- 
nificently decorated for the splendid function. After a discourse in Latin to 
which she responded in the same tongue, she was crowned with a laurel wreath 
exquisitely wrought in silver, and had thrown round her the vajo, or university 
gown, both symbols of the doctorate. Her next triumph was when she passed 
the public examinations and was appointed by acclamation to the chair of 
physics in the University of Bologna, an office which she held many years, 
and always with increasing fame. (Mozans: Woman in Science, pp. 202-09.) 

Lady Mary Wortley Montagu was much impressed by the fame of Laura 
Bassi and wrote to England about her, and Lady Pomfret, on her visit to 
Italy, made a point of seeing the famous lady professor; but in general the 
Englishwomen seem to have been quite ignorant of the status of learned 
women in Italy. 

Anna Manzolini (1716-1774) held the chair of anatomy in Bologna for many 
years and is famous for her wax models of the organs of the human body. 
(Mozans: Woman in Science, pp. 235-37.) 


IN ENGLAND FROM 1650 TO 1760 251 


Miss Mary Chandler (1687-1745), the daughter of a minis- 
ter, was a popular poetess of Bath, where she jig Mary 
had at eighteen set up a little shop. She was Chandler 
literary in her tastes and in spite of constant Geer tas) 
ill-health and the hard work entailed by her shop she found 
time for wide reading in poetry. She also wrote rhyming rid- 
dles and poems to her friends. She became a favorite among 
the gentry and the literary ladies in and about Bath, Lady 
Russell, the Duchess of Somerset, Mrs. Barber, and Elizabeth 
Rowe being among her friends. She often visited at great 
houses and her poems were handed about with much praise. 
She was finally advised to make a collection of these occasional 
verses and publish them. They appeared under the title A 
Description of Bath, and the book was so favorably received 
that it went through six editions by 1744, and a seventh and 
an eighth edition in 1755 and 1767. Our knowledge of Miss 
Chandler comes mainly from Cibber’s Lives of the Poets. The 
account published by Cibber was written by Miss Chandler’s 
brother Samuel.! 


Mary Granville was sent at six to the private school of 
' Mdlle. Puelle. From eight to seventeen she jory Granville 
was educated at home according to the estab- (Mrs. Delany) 
lished programme for girls destined for mar- (*70°-?788) 
riage and social position. “Music, reading, writing, French, 
work, and whist” are the occupations she enumerates. At 
seventeen she was married to Alexander Pendarves, a match 
counted advantageous though the bridegroom was sixty and 
detested by the bride. After the wedding — “conducted with 
much pomp and misery” — there came seven years on an iso- 
lated estate where all the skill and patience of the young wife 
were called into action by the jealous fancies and the hypo- 
chondriac whims of her invalid husband. At twenty-four, a 
beautiful widow, she entered upon a gay period of London life. 
Socially a success she had many offers of marriage, but her 
1 Cibber: Lives of the Poets. Nichols: Literary Anecdotes, vol. v, pp. 304-08. 


252 THE LEARNED LADY 


affections were entirely centered upon Lord Baltimore. His 
impassioned love was not, however, equal to the strain put upon 
it by her small dowry, and he suddenly married a rich wife. 
After the long illness that followed this destruction of her hopes 
Mrs. Pendarves went to Ireland to recuperate. There she met 
Patrick Delany whom, years later, when she was forty-three, 
she married. The most satisfying years of her life came after 
this marriage. Dr. Delany belonged to the best literary set of 
Dublin, and he was in full accord with his wife’s literary and 
artistic interests. For a quarter of a century her life was one 
of leisure, stimulating companionship, much reading and dis- 
cussion, much social variety, and long hours of entertaining 
hand-work. After Dr. Delany’s death in 1768 Mrs. Delany 
lived in an honored, dignified, but not inactive retirement. 
She was loved and visited by the King and Queen and by many 
devoted friends. There had gathered about her name a tradi- 
tion of love and admiration. A sketch of her entitled ‘“‘ Maria,” 
by Dr. Delany, does not exceed the general impression we get 
of her charm. He wrote: 


Maria was early initiated into every art, with elegance and condi- 
tion, that could form her into a fine lady, a good woman, and a good 
Christian. She read and wrote two languages correctly and judi- 
ciously. She soon became a mistress of her pen in every art to which 
a pen could be applied. She wrote a fine hand in the most masterly 
manner, she drew, and she designed with amazing correctness and 
skill.... 

With a person finely proportioned, she had a lovely face of great 
sweetness set off with a head of fair hair, shining and naturally curled, 
with a complexion which nothing could equal, in which the lilies 
and the roses contended for the mastery. Her eyes were bright .. . 
indeed, I could never tell the colour they were of, but to the best of 
my belief they were what Solomon calls “‘Dove’s eyes,” and she is 
almost the only woman I ever saw whose lips were scarlet and her 
bloom beyond comparison. 


Mr. Ballard dedicated the second part of the Memoirs of 
Learned Ladies to her as “the truest judge, and the brightest 
pattern of all the accomplishments which adorn her sex.” 


IN ENGLAND FROM 1650 TO 1760 253 


Burke called her “the highest bred woman of the world and the 
woman of fashion of all ages.” 

These citations but faintly indicate the impression made by 
Mrs. Delany on her contemporaries. It is not, however, an im- 
pression sustained by any existing work of hers. The seventy- 
two pictures she painted were copies of old masters with occa- 
sional portraits of relatives and friends, and they were highly 
prized at the time, but no one of them was of sufficient excel- 
lence to secure permanent recognition. Her wide and diversi- 
fied reading is evidenced by her letters which are full of refer- 
ences to the histories, novels, plays, criticism, and devotional 
works occupying her eager attention. She carried books on 
every journey. She read or was read to every spare moment. 
But none of this miscellaneous devotion to books resulted in 
anything like learning or even in a critically discriminating 
taste. 

Her two real achievements were letter-writing and hand- 
work. Over a thousand of her letters have been published. 
They are lively and entertaining and are valuable for the 
study of mid-eighteenth-century social life. Especially vivid 
are her accounts of festivities. The rooms and their fur- 
nishings, the gowns and jewels of the ladies, the refresh- 
ments served, the guests and their idiosyncrasies, are effect- 
ively sketched in. There is humorous appreciation, but no 
touch of malice, and almost no gossip. The refinement and 
sweetness of tone in the letters never becomes vapid or 
mawkish. There is always a counter-balancing gayety and 
buoyancy of mood. Mrs. Delany must have made letter- 
writing nearly as much a matter of business as did Miss 
Seward, but the heavy “epistolary solicitudes” of the Swan of 
Lichfield are at the other end of the scale from Mrs. Delany’s 
bright naturalness. Mrs. Delany’s letters are but a clear 
medium revealing “the fine lady, the good woman, and the 
good Christian” of Dr. Delany’s picture of “Maria.” 

The most surprising element of Mrs. Delany’s life is her hand- 
work. In October, 1750, she wrote: “I am going to make a very 


254 THE LEARNED LADY 


comfortable closet, to have a dresser, and all manner of working 
tools, to keep all my stores for painting, carving, and gilding, 
etc., for my own room is now so clean and pretty that I cannot 
suffer it to be strewed with litter, only books and work, and the 
closet belonging to it to be given up to prints, drawings, and my 
collections of fossils and minerals.” 

With almost any tool she had instinctive dexterity, and she 
had taste and originality. She apparently enjoyed every kind 
of hand-work that came to her notice. She never wasted a min- 
ute. The knotting-shuttle and the embroidery needle were con- 
stant attendants on her tea-table hours, and she accomplished 
almost unbelievable amounts in designing and working fancy 
gowns, coverings for chairs and sofas, bed-curtains, ete. She 
made a carpet and other elaborate pieces in double cross-stitch; 
she did “shell lustres” and chenille work; she designed and 
executed a chapel ceiling in cards and shells. Most remark- 
able of all is her herbal begun when she was seventy-two 
and completed when she was eighty-five. The flowers were 
made of colored papers and were so accurate as hardly to be 
distinguished from the flowers themselves. This paper mosaic 
was left to the Duchess of Portland with a selection of twenty 
of the flowers to Queen Charlotte. The herbal is now in the 
British Museum. 

A review of the achievements of Mrs. Delany — her paint- 
ing, her hand-work, her letter-writing, her multifarious reading 
— shows that these are but incidental to her personal charm. 
Her beauty, and the loveliness of her nature, made a fine com- 
mendatory background for whatever she did. A friend’s por- 
trait, a design for a gown, a bit of turning in ivory, a letter — 
every trifle gained in value when illumined by the “dove’s 
eyes” of so high-bred and elegant a lady. Her character was 
marked by uprightness, dignity, and good judgment. She was 
delicate in her feelings, gentle, courteous, and most sincerely 
kind. All of her qualities made her a desirable member of any 
family or social group. It is as a fine lady of the best type that 
she is remembered, not as a learned woman. 


IN ENGLAND FROM 1650 TO 1760 255 


Elizabeth Carter lived nearly half a century after the close 
of the period now under consideration, and her __ 
fame as a learned lady belongs chiefly in the ag aoa 
second half of the century, but the work on 
which that fame was based belongs before 1760. Our knowl- 
edge of her life comes mainly from two sources, her Memoirs 
published in 1807 by her nephew and executor, Montagu 
Pennington, and a series of letters between Miss Carter and 
Miss Talbot written in the years 1741-1770 and published in 
1809. There are also many allusions to Miss Carter in con- 
temporary writings.! 

Miss Carter’s linguistic tastes were early in evidence, but 
she was discouragingly slow and dull in mastering language 
details. It was by sheer force of industry that she developed 
her remarkable aptitude for foreign tongues. Latin, Greek, 
and Hebrew she learned from her father. Italian, Spanish, and 
German she taught herself. French she had learned as a child 
from a Huguenot refugee minister in Canterbury. She also 
gained some knowledge of Portuguese, and she finally studied 
Arabic. She began her career as an author at seventeen with 
verses signed “Eliza” in The Gentleman’s Magazine. At twenty- 
one her slender little volume of poems appeared. It is all occa- 
sional verse and nowhere rises to any particular excellence. 
But its moralizing and reflective tone proved acceptable to 
many readers and there were new editions in 1762, 1766, 1776, 
1777, with a translation into French in 1706. 

In 1739 Miss Carter’s knowledge of French and Italian, her 
wide reading, and her interest in philosophical questions were 
shown by her translation from the French of an attack on 
Pope’s Essay on Man, by M. Crousaz,? and a translation from 

1 For a recent life see Gaussen: Alice C. C.: A Woman of Wit and Wisdom. 

2 This translation from Crousaz was published anonymously and was gen- 
erally attributed to Dr. Johnson, but an article in Dr. Birch’s manuscripts in 
the British Museum attributes it decisively to her. The note indicates also 
Dr. Birch’s estimate of the translation: “ELIS# CARTER. S. P. D. 
Thomas BIRCH. Versionem tuam Examinis Crousaziani jam perlegi. Sum- 


mam styli et elegantiam, et in re difficilimé proprietatem, admiratus. (Dabam) 
Novemb. 27 1738.” Boswell’s Life of Johnson. (Everyman.) vol. 1, p. 78. 


256 THE LEARNED LADY 


the Italian of Algarotti’s Newtonianismo per le dame.! At thirty- 
two she began her translation of Epictetus at the request of Miss 
Talbot and Archbishop Secker. She kept rather fitfully at this 
task for three years, from time to time forwarding completed 
sheets to the deanery. She had not made the translation with 
any thought of publication and it was with much difficulty that 
she could be brought to consider the thought of presenting her 
work to a general public. But consensus of authoritative opin- 
ion as to the ethical value of the original and the excellence of 
the translation led her finally to consent to a subseription pub- 
lication at a guinea a volume in 1758. The success was unprec- 
edented. Her share of the profits was one thousand guineas 
and her fame was established beyond cavil. 

After Epictetus we hear of no more work by Miss Carter. 
Her intellectual life was not, however, at a standstill. She kept 
up her languages by daily assigned readings, she read much in 
ancient and modern history, she shows thorough familiarity 
with new books of science, poetry, and letters. She practiced 
on the spinet and German flute. She was an admirable house- 
keeper, being in especial repute for puddings, cakes, and pas- 
tries. All odd minutes were given to work with the needle and 
the shuttle. And she was guide and teacher to her young half- 
brothers and sisters. But we get no more poems, no more 
learned translations. 

Her growing reputation as the most distinguished bas bleu 
in England, her social success during London winters, the awe 
with which her country neighbors regarded her as “the greatest 
schollard in the world,” her travels in England and on the Con- 
tinent, her literary and artistic friendships — all these given in _ 
vivid detail in her letters — belong in the picture of the bril- 
liant life after the mid-century mark. 

But in whatever period, from whatever point of view, Miss 
Carter presents us with a career almost unexampled in the an- 


1 Her translation of Algarotti’s Newtonianismo per le dame appeared under 
the title, Sir Isaac Newton’s Philosophy Explained for the use of the Ladies. In 
Siz Dialogues on Light and Colour. Two volumes. 1739. 


MISS ELIZABETH CARTER 
From an engraving in The Works of Elizabeth Carter, 1806 


IN ENGLAND FROM 1650 TO 1760 257 


nals of learned ladies. She chose learning young and pursued 
it undeviatingly, with no hesitancies and no retrospective re- 
grets. There were no disapproving friends or relatives to in- 
terpose obstacles in her path. Few girls, even to-day, could have 
greater freedom in the determination of their own hours, occu- 
pations, and pleasures. Her father, though disheartened by her 
slow progress, was her faithful teacher. Even her stepmother 
aided and abetted her extravagant devotion to study. She was 
allowed to determine the momentous question of marriage en- 
tirely according to her own inclinations. Her published work 
met with immediate praise. She was but twenty-two when 
Johnson published epigrams in Greek and Latin in her honor, 
and said she should be praised in as many languages as Lewis 
the Grand. And by middle life she had achieved independence, 
money, and fame. 

Nor was her career merely an external success brilliantly 
masking unsatisfied inner desires. On the contrary, to the end 
her eighty-nine years seemed rich and gracious to her. She did 
not covet other women’s lovers or husbands or children or homes. 
She set possible honors lightly aside. When her friends were 
urging upon her a place at court, she dreamed that she had cut 
off her head for the greater convenience of curling her hair, and 
she declared this dream symbolic of the fatal cost at which 
honors were often bought. Her joys were of an unambitious, 
quiet, perennial sort. She loved nature in all its moods of 
storm and shine. Her genius for friendship nearly equaled the 
“Matchless Orinda’s.”’ She loved reading and had many books. 
She enjoyed reflection and had many hours of happy solitude. 
She was domestic in her tastes and found herself loved and 
needed in her father’s home. She had a sound, sweet, sensible, 
modest nature that not only disarmed criticism, but preserved 
her from any undue or arrogant emphasis on her position as the 
most distinguished literary woman of her time. And she had 
an unfailing sense of humor that sent an undercurrent of enjoy- 
ment through even the prosaic and dreary parts of life. 


CHAPTER III 
EDUCATION 


1. BoarDING-ScHOOLS FOR GIRLS 


Or schools for girls in the period from 1650 to 1750 we can 
get only the most scattered bits of information. It is apparent 
that there were boarding-schools for girls from five to sixteen, 
and that these schools rapidly increased in number, but of the 
scope and nature of the instruction we have only the most gen- 
eral ideas. In 1677 there appeared the following advertisement: 

In Oxford there is set up a boarding-school for young gentle- 
women (by John Waver, Master in the art of dancing) where they 


may be educated and instructed in the art of dancing, singing, music, 
writing, and all manner of works. 


A more famous school was at Chelsea in Gorges House. Our 
first knowledge of this boarding-school comes from a play given 
by the pupils. It was dated 1676 and was entitled “Beauty’s 
Triumph, a masque presented by the scholars of Mr. Jeffrey 
Banister and Mr. James Hart at their new Boarding-School for 
young Ladies and Gentlewomen kept in that house which was 
formerly Sir Arthur Gorges at Chelsey.” ! The “Epilogue — 
Spoken by a young lady” recounts “the serious things” done in 
the school, embroidery and modeling in wax being the chief items. 

One in rich works with lively colours tells 


Lucretia’s rape or mourning Philomel’s; 
Each chaste beholder sighs and drops a tear. 


Another’s different mind more pleasure takes 
In various forms to mould the painted wax; 
Such shape, such beauty in each piece is shown, 
Nature sits pale, or blushing on her own, 

To see her pride by curious art out-done. 


1 Davies, Randall: The Greatest House at Chelsey, p. 92. 


EDUCATION 259 


Between 1680 and 1690 Purcell’s Dido and Zneas was given 
at this school. D’Urfey’s Love for Money; or, the Boarding 
School (1691) has its scene “Chelsey by the River” and is sup- 
posed to refer to this school. It was here that Molly Verney 
learned to japan. The school maintained its repute under Mr. 
Portman, and later under Josias Priests. 
In 1680 the school was advertised: 

' Josias Priests, dancing master, that kept a boarding school for 
gentlewomen in Leicester Field is removed to the great school-house 
in Chelsea, which was Mr. Portman’s, where he did teach, and will 
continue the said master and others to the improvement of the said 
school. 


Gorges House was demolished in 1726. 

Two other notices belong in the reign of Queen Anne. The 
first one shows the continued popularity of the Hackney 
schools: 

Whereas it is reported that Mrs. Overing who keeps a Boarding 
School at Bethnal Green near Hackney, is leaving off; this is to give 
Notice that the said Report is false, if not Malicious. And that she 


continues to take sober young Gentlewomen to board and teach what- 
ever is necessary to the Accomplishment of that sex. 


The second one reads, 


Mrs. Elizabeth Tutchin continues to keep her school at High- 
gate, notwithstanding Reports to the contrary. Where young Gentle- 
women may be soberly Educated, and taught all sorts of Learning fit 
for young Gentlewomen.! 


In The Levellers a dialogue between two young ladies, we 
have an account of the education given at most of these 
schools. One of the young ladies says: 

You know my father was a tradesman, and lived very well by his 
traffick; and I, being beautiful, he thought nature had already given 
me part of my portion, and therefore he would add a liberal education, 
that I might be a complete gentlewoman; away he sent me to the 
boarding school; there I learned to dance and sing; to play on the bass 


1 Ashton, John: Social Life in the Reign of Queen Anne, p. 17. 


260 THE LEARNED LADY 


viol, virginals, spinet, and guitar. I learned to make wax work, japan, 
paint upon glass, to raise paste, make sweetmeats, sauces, and every- 
thing that was genteel and fashionable.! 


One element here indicated seems to have held a fairly per- 
manent place, and that is some trifling form of hand-work. A 
book published in 1671 gives a hint as to the nature of this 
work. It is entitled Four hundred new sorts of Birds, Beasts, 
Flowers, Fruits, Fish, Flyes, Worms, Landskips, Ovals, and His- 
tories, etc. Lively coloured for all sorts of Gentlewomen and School- 
Mistresses Works. Many of the kinds of work with which 
women attempted to get rid of their leisure were apparently 
taught in the schools. All sorts of needlework seem to have been 
included in the necessary subjects. The interest in samplers is 
shown by a reference in The Tailer, April 19, 1709, to an “ex- 
cellent discourse”’ by “Mrs. Arabella Manly, School-Mistress 
at Hackney,” entitled An Essay on the Invention of Samplers, 
communicated by Mrs. Judith Bagford with an account of her 
Collections for the same.? 

In 1714 a “Venerable Correspondent” wrote to The Spec- 
tator that in her day young women “‘ Worked Beds, Chairs, and 
Hangings,” and urged The Spectator to recommend a renewal of 
these activities. The humorous response is hardly an exagger- 
ated statement of the great pieces of work undertaken by the 
women of the seventeenth century: 


What a delightful Entertainment must it be to the Fair Sex, whom 
their native Modesty, and the Tenderness of Men towards them, 
exempts from Publick Business, to pass their hours in imitating Fruits 
and Flowers, and transplanting all the Beauties of Nature into their 
own Dress, or raising a new Creation in their Closets and Apartments. 
How pleasing is the Amusement of walking among the Shades and 
Groves planted by themselves, in surveying Heroes slain by their 
Needle, or little Cupids which they have brought into the World 
without Pain. 

This is, methinks, the most proper way wherein a Lady can shew 


1 Ashton, John: Social Life in the Reign of Queen Anne, p. 18. 
2 Published in vol. 11 of Works of Dr. W. King in 1776. (The Tatler, April 
19, 1709, n.) 


EDUCATION 261 


a fine Genius, and I cannot forbear wishing, that several Writers of 
that Sex had chosen to apply themselves rather to Tapestry than 
Rhime. Your Pastoral Poetesses may vent their Fancy in Rural Land- 
skips, and place despairing Shepherds under silken Willows, or drown 
them in a Stream of Mohair. . . . How memorable would that Matron 
be, who should have it Inscribed upon her Monument, “‘That she 
wrought out the whole Bible in Tapestry, and died in a good old Age, 
after having covered three hundred Yards of Wall in the Mansion- 
House.” ! 


In the eighteenth century embroidery and tapestry are still 
an occupation, but other and less tedious works partially sup- 
plant them. Pope’s Grotto was not an isolated curiosity. The 
Spectator suggests the part women were taking in the manu- 
facture of grottoes: 

There is a very particular kind of Work, which of late several Ladies 
here in our Kingdom seem very fond of, which seems very well adapted 
to a Poetical Genius: It is the making of Grottos. I know a Lady 
who has a very Beautiful one, composed by herself, nor is there one 
Shell in it not stuck up by her own Hands.? 


Pope wrote an inscription for a “Grotto of Shells at Crux 
Easton, the Work of Nine young Ladies.”” These young ladies 
were sisters and their grotto was also celebrated by “N. H.” 3 
In 1735 “S. J.”’ wrote a poem to a Lady to accompany a present 
of shells and stones for her grotto. In 1746 Mr. Graves con- 
gratulated Lady Fane on her “ grotto divine” where “miracles 
are wrought by shells.” ® 

Paper-cutting also remained something of an art. Waller 
had praised a lady who skillfully cut a tree in paper.’ Cutting 
silhouettes was one of the diversions of the circle of Dr. Swift, 
Dr. Delany, and Mr. Sheridan. There is a series of poems, con- 
cerning “Dan Jackson’s Picture Cut in Silk and Paper,” by 
Lady Betty.” The most important cut-paper work on record 

1 The Spectator, No. 606 (Oct. 18,1714). 2 Ibid., No. 32 (Dec. 13, 1714). 

8 Dodsley’s Collection of Poems in Six Volumes by Several Hands (1758, fifth 
edition), vol. v1, pp. 161-62. 

4 Iiid., vol. m1, p. 142. 


5 Johnson: Works of the English Poets, vol. vit, p. 165. 
6 Tbid., vol. v, p. 62. 7 [bid., vol. XXxIx, pp. 233-42. 


262 THE LEARNED LADY 


is Mrs. Delany’s herbarium or paper mosaics, but this did not 
come till the last quarter of the century.! 


Mrs. Barber’s Patch-Work Screen gets its name from another 
sort of device. Screens were adorned by pasting odds and ends 
of pictures all over them. Mrs. Elizabeth Rowe wrote to the 
Duchess of Somerset in 1734: “The screen your Ladyship sent 
me is a Rareeshew for all the women and children about town 
who have anything of a nice and elegant taste.”” The Duchess 
was at this time doing tent-stitch concerning which Mrs. Rowe 
wrote: 

Tam delighted with all your entertainments, except the Tent-stitch ; 
and that I own, I admire, but then’t is as some people admire virtue, 
only in speculation. It seems to me an ante-diluvian invention, a 
task for those long-breath’d people, who spent a sort of eternity on 
earth, compar’d to the short duration of a modern period. However, 
T am in no pain for your Ladyship: whether your attempt is a chair or 
a stool, I suppose it will be an hereditary occupation; if you finish the 
branch of a tree, and Lady , a shepherd’s crook, the service of 


your generation is done, and you may contentedly leave the rest to 
be finished by your children’s children. 


In 1758 Lady Bute had just completed a carpet concerning 
which she wrote to her mother, Lady Mary Wortley Montagu. 
Lady Mary answered: 

You need not excuse to me taking notice of your carpet. I think you 
have great reason to value your-self on the performance, but will have 
better than I have had if you can persuade anybody else to do so. I 


could never get people to believe that I set a stitch, when I worked six 
hours in a day. 


Perhaps the most popular of all the arts was japanning. 
Molly (b. 1675), the daughter of Edmund Verney, was sent at 
eight to Mrs. Priest’s school at Great Chelsey. Her father 
wrote to her: 

I find you have a desire to learn to Jappan, as you call it, and I 


approve of it; and so I shall of anything that is Good & Virtuous, 
therefore learn in God’s name all Good Things, & I will willingly be 


1 Wheeler, Ethel Root: Famous Blue Stockings, pp. 78-82. 


EDUCATION 263 


at the Charge so farr as I am able — tho’ they come from Japan or 
from never so farr & Looke of an Indian Hue & Odour, for I admire 
all accomplishments that will render you considerable, and Lovely 
in the sight of God and man.? 


The continued favor accorded japanning is shown by a letter 
from Mrs. Rowe to the Duchess of Somerset in 1734: 


My great attainment at present is colouring prints: If Lady 
wants any birds for her new Japan, I have some at her service. Mrs. 
is so inchanted with this new japanning, that she has abandon’d 
Mr. Bazter, and the Greek Fathers, and employes her time in sticking 
bears and monkies on all the wooden furniture she can find about the 
house. 


Japanning was taught in most of the schools. 

Mrs. Montagu, Queen of the Blue-Stockings, was indefati- 
gable in her devotion to hand-work. Not only was she familiar 
with every kind of needlework, but she turned in wood and 
ivory, made shell grottoes, and designed shell frames, and she 
planned and executed feather hangings for a room. Mrs. 
Delany is the only lady whose recorded work exceeds that of 
Mrs. Montagu in amount and variety. 

Domestic science was faintly foreshadowed in what were 
known as “Pastry Schools.” The following illustrates the 
type: 

To all young ladies at Edw. Kidder’s Pastry School in little Lin- 
coln’s Inn Fields are taught all sorts of Pastry and Cookery, Dutch 
hollow works, and Butter works, on Thursdays, Fridays, and Satur- 
day, in the afternoon, and on the same days in the Morning, at his 
school in Norris Street in St. James’s Market, and at his School in St. 
Martin’s Le Grand, on Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday in the 
Afternoons. And at his School at St. Mary Overies Dock, Mondays. 
Tuesdays and Wednesday Mornings from 9 to 12.? 


An entertaining passage in Shadwell’s The Scowrers (1690) 
indicates something of the character of a girl’s education in the 
country: 


1 Memoirs of the Verney Family, vol. tv, p. 220. 
2 Ashton, John: Social Life in the Reign of Queen Anne, p. 19. 


264 THE LEARNED LADY 


Priscilla. Did she not bestow good breeding upon you there? 

Eugenia. Breeding! what, to learn to feed Ducklings, and cram 
Chickens? 

Clara. To see cows milk’d, learn to Churn, and make cheese? 

Eugen. To make Clouted cream, and whipt sillabubs? 

Clara. To make a Caraway Cake, and raise Py Crust? 

Eugen. And to learn the top of your skill in Syrrup, Sweetmeat, 
Aqua Mirabilis, and Snayl water. 

Clara. Or your great Cunning in Cheese cake, several Creams and 
Almond butter. 

Prisc. Ay, ay, and ’t were better for all the Gentlemen in England 
that Wives had no other breeding, but you had Musick and Dancing. 

Eugen. Yes, an ignorant, illiterate, hopping Puppy, that rides his 
Dancing Circuit thirty Miles about, lights off his tyred steed, draws 
his Kit at a poor Country creature, and gives her a Hich im her Pace, 
that she shall never recover. 

Clara. And for Musick an old hoarse singing man riding ten miles 
from his Cathedral to Quaver out the Glories of our Birth and State, 
or it may be a Scotch Song more hideous and barbarous than an Irish 
Cronan. 

Eugen. And another Musick Master from the néxt town to Teach 
one to twinkle out Lilly burlero upon an old pair of Virginals, that sound 
worse than a Tinker’s Ketile that cries for his work on. 


We happen to have somewhat more definite knowledge of one 
early eighteenth-century school for girls. Mrs. Hannah Wood, 
the “‘ Mistress of a College-Boarding School” in Bury, in 1723, 
was the sister of Mr. D. Bellamy who wrote “Dramatic Enter- 
tainments”’ for the “Annual Public Exercises of the School.” 
These “‘ Entertainments” were published with a dedication to 
Mrs. Wood, “A Prefatory Essay,” and some “Familiar Let- 
ters.” Mr. Bellamy considers it the particular province of Mrs. 
Wood “to polish Nature,” since she has “a perfect Idea of 
every Female Accomplishment” and if her young ladies can be 
‘One Virtue the better” through his labors it is ample reward. 

Mr. Bellamy’s plays were rather elaborately staged. There 
were “pastoral figure dances” and considerable singing. One 
character enters “drest like a Gentleman.” There is a machine 
for the descent of Apollo. The dramas performed are carefully 
adapted to young ladies, “the porcelaine-clay of humankind.” 


EDUCATION 265 


Mr. Bellamy examines every word and weighs each thought to 
see that “The sence is Chast and inoffensive to nicest tast.” 
The first of the plays given is Vanquish’d Love : or, The Jealous 
Queen, an adaptation of the Rosamund of Addison. The em- 
phasis on warm passions, amorous prayers, guilty fires, rage, 
jealousy, vengeance, and death, would but doubtfully con- 
tribute to the delicate innocence of the young ladies. All is, 
however, made right by the abrupt and unnatural repentance of 
King Henry, and his eulogy of the sweets of “Virtuous Love.” 
The second play, Innocence Betray’d ; or, The Royal Imposter, 
was taken from Cowley’s Love’s Riddle. In the Epilogue a 
young lady says the auditors may 


Wish we had Rehears’d our Spelling Books: 
And think our Time had been much better spent 
In Cross-Stitch, Irish-Stitch, or at the Tent. 


And Mr. Bellamy is quite conscious that some indulgent and 
timorous parents may censure his designs of teaching young 
ladies to speak before an audience: 


There are too many, I know, are of Opinion, that the Art of Pro- 
nunciation is no Female Accomplishment; that the Ladies were de- 
sign’d by Nature for the Objects of Sight only; and that to encourage 
them in Dramatic Representations, is to offer Violence to their native 
Modesty. .. . 

”T was an Observation of One of the most learned Prelates of his 
Age, the late Archbishop of Cambray, That the general Mistake of 
Parents in the Education of their Daughters, was this; “That they 
were too solicitous about the Ornament of their Person, and too remiss, 
if not entirely regardless, of the Endowments of their Mind.” 

*T is pity methinks that the favourite Works of Nature should be 
nothing but moving Pictures, and, like Sir Godfrey Kneller’s Canvas, 
as Mr. Dryden expresses it, only Look a Voice; that the Study of the 
Toilet should be recommended to them, as their most material Accom- 
plishment, whilst the Improvement of their Judgment is neglected 
as a Trifle, and the early Exercise of their Rational Faculties es- 
teem’d, if not a Crime, an Act of Imprudence and ill Conduct. 


In the presentation of the play the young ladies are urged to 
enter into the characters they have taken, and to remember the 


266 THE LEARNED LADY 


reverence and respect they owe their auditors. Under more 
specific directions Mr. Bellamy says: 


In the first place, Ladies, carefully avoid all unnatural Distortions 
both of your Limbs and Features. Wry mouths, contracted Brows, 
shrug’d up shoulders, and the like are Farce and Buffoonry, very dis- 
agreeable and very ungenteel: Nay, Coughing and Spitting, unless 
very accidental, are vicious Habits, and ought betimes to be cor- 
rected. 


Among “Useful Observations” is the following on modula- 
tion of the voice: 

All Persons Names, viz., I, Thou, He, She, We, Ye, and They, etc. 
and their following States, Me, Thee, Him, Her, Us, You, and Them, 
etc. and their Possessives, My, Thy, Our, Yours, Theirs, Mine, Thine, 
ete. and all Epithets, Adjectives, or Qualities, by which Substantives, 
Beings, or Things are explain’d and distinguish’d as, Black, White, 
Good, Bad, Round, Square, and the like, should always be read or 
spoken with a clear, open, and distinct Voice, as they are for the most 
part very emphatical, and the Beauty of Expression depends much 
upon them. 


In a letter on “Female Accomplishments” the Virtuous and 
Fair Antiope in the twenty-second book of Fénelon’s Tele- 
machus is set forth as an example of a lady of the first quality. 
Her silence, modesty, reservedness, gentleness, her assiduous 
industry in spinning and embroidering, her regularity and or- 
der and poise, make her a treasure worthy to be sought in 
far regions. In the letter on “Innocent Recreations” reading 
is particularly commended. The “chaste and very useful” 
collection of books suggested is based on the Postscript to Dr. 
Hickes’s Instructions for the Education of a Daughter, and is as 
follows: . 

The whole Duty of Man, The Lady’s Calling, The Government of 
the Tongue, Mr. Nelson’s Companion for the Feast and Fasts of the 
Church of England, Meditations and Soliloquies of St. Augustine, 
Comber and Bennet on the Liturgy, Mr. Boyle on the Style of 
the Scriptures. Tillotson’s Sermons, Paradise Lost with Addison’s 
judicious and entertaining Remarks, Blackmore’s Paraphrase on Job, 
Cowley’s Davideis. 


EDUCATION 267 


For the gayer part of poetry, 


Mr. Waller, Mr. Cowley’s Mistress, some pieces of Mr. Prior, par- 
ticularly his Henry and Emma. Mr. Norris’s Miscellany, and Mr. 
Watts’s Hore Lyrice. For precepts of Morality I would lay before 
her Sir Roger L’Estrange’s Seneca and his Fables; Mr. Collier’s Essays 
and his Antoninus and some select pieces of the Letters and Spectators. 


For history, Lord Clarendon on the Rebellion and Dr. Welwood’s 
Memoirs are suggested. 


For novels, the Adventures of Telemachus, translated by Mr. Ozell; 
and Don Quizot by Mr. Motteux, Mr. Congreve, and others, are 
the only Pieces that I would offer to her. For Plays, tho’ there are 
too many unfit for a young Lady’s Perusal: yet such as Cato, Love 
and Empire, Tamerlane, the Mourning Bride, the Distress’d Mother, 
Phedra and Hippolitus, and the Conscious Lovers, with many more, 
can never be read without Pleasure and Improvement. 


Schools for young ladies increased in number during the 
eighteenth century, especially near London. Malcolm, in 1808, 
said that even so early as 1759 


two or three houses might be seen in almost every village, with the 
inscription, ‘Young Ladies boarded and educated,” where every 
description of tradesmen sent their children to be instructed, not in 
the useful attainments necessary for humble life, but the arts of co- 
quetry and self-consequence — in short, those of a young lady. The 
person who received the children had then the sounding title of 
Governess: and French and Dancing-masters prepared the girl for 
the hour when contempt for her parents’ deficiencies was to be sub- 
stituted for affection and respect. Instead of reading their native lan- 
guage with propriety and just emphasis, it was totally neglected, and 
in place of nervous sentences and flowing periods, the vulgarisms of 
low life were continued; while the lady repeated familiar words of the 
French language with a sound peculiar to Boarding-schools, and quite 
unintelligible to a native of France: the pleasing labours of the needle 
were thrown aside, and the young lady soon became an adept in imi- 
tating laces and spoiling the beauty of coloured silks.1 


The Idler in 1750 comments on female education as spoiling 
girls for service: 


1 Malcolm, Jas. P.: Anecdotes of the Manners and Customs of London in the 
Eighteenth Century, vol. 1, p. 328. 


268 THE LEARNED LADY 


Scarcely a wench was to be got for all work, since education had 
made such numbers of fine ladies that nobody would now accept a 
lower title than that of waiting-maid, or something that might qualify 
her to wear laced shoes and long ruffles and to sit at work in the parlor 
window. 


2. CHaritTy SCHOOLS 


In 1698 the Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge 
started a movement for the establishment of charity schools. 
An organized propaganda for getting subscriptions was under- 
taken by the bishops and was so successful that between 1698 
and 1715 more than one hundred of these schools were estab- 
lished in London and Westminster. In this scheme poor girls 
were considered as well as poor boys. They were, of course, in 
separate schools. Each school had a prescribed uniform and 
the pupils marching in a body made a picturesque addition to 
many a civic festival. In 1714 Thoresby went to hear “the 
Bishop of London preach the charity sermon before an almost 
innumerable company of poor children, decently clad in various 
colours, which are Christianly educated and cared for in the 
several wards of the city, both for soul and body.” ? In 1723 
he again records seeing the Lord Mayor in all his pomp going 
to St. Bride’s Church with a great train of charity children, all 
decently habited, some with blue coats with yellow vests, others 
brown, most with blue caps, but some with white hats and 
mathematical instruments in their hands.* By 1753 the num- 
ber of charity children that went to Christ Church to hear 
the Anniversary Sermon was five thousand. William Blake, in 
Songs of Innocence (1789) and in Songs of Experience (1799), 
gives the impression of great numbers. In the first of these 
commemorations Blake voices what was the general atti- 
tude, and that is a eulogy of London’s magnificent gener- 
osity. The second one represents a much more modern tone, 
that of question as to a city’s social and civic standards 


1 Encyclopedia Britannica, vol. 24, p. 370. . 
2 Thoresby: Diary, May 20, 1714. 3 Ibid., April 15, 1723. 


EDUCATION 269 


where the supply of helpless orphans was so large and so 
constant. 

The word education is too pretentious for most of these 
schools. The purpose in the main was to train boys and girls 
for service. In the pictures drawn by Hogarth in 1741 in honor 
of Captain Coram’s noble charity, The Foundling Hospital, the 
three little girls in the foreground are holding a spinning-wheel, 
a sampler, and a broom, indicating branches of industry to 
which they were destined. 

There were also many privately endowed schools in various 
parts of England. In 1726 William Law, the author of The 
Serious Call, brought out a treatise on Christian Perfection. It is 
said that an anonymous stranger presented him with £1000 on 
reading it. The next year Law founded a school for fourteen 
girls at King’s Cliffe, and the money is supposed to have come 
from this gift. When Archibald Hutcheson died in 1740 he 
expressed a wish that his widow should lead a retired and reli- 
gious life under Law’s guidance. Miss Hester Gibbon joined 
Mrs Hutcheson. Their joint income was £2600 a year, most 
of which they planned to spend in charity. In 1744 they settled 
down in King’s Cliffe in Law’s house, formerly a royal manor 
house and known as “King John’s Palace,” where they con- 
tinued the girls’ school, and added to it a school for eighteen 
boys. The important schools in Yorkshire founded by Lady 
Elizabeth Hastings have already been mentioned. 

Other more private and personal and less permanent edu- 
cational ventures are occasionally recorded. A religious family 
school something after the fashion of Little Gidding was now 
and then attempted. One “religious retirement” is mentioned 
by Bishop Ken. Two dear friends whom he frequently visited 
were Mary and Anne Kemys of Cefn Mably, Glamorganshire. 
After the death of their mother in 1683 they went to reside 
at Naish Court, about a mile from Porteshead. There they 
established a kind of Anglican sisterhood where they lived a 
devout life and did charitable works. Bishop Ken was their 
spiritual adviser, and since he had known Nicholas Ferrar well, 


270 THE LEARNED LADY 


it is not unlikely that the ideals at Naish Court were somewhat 
like those at Little Gidding.t In 1698 Sir George Wheler 
brought out a tractate entitled A Protestant Monastery, or Chris- 
tian Economics, containing Directions for the Religious Conduct 
of a Family. He founded and endowed a school for girls at 
Houghton-le-Springs, Durham, when he was rector there. Sir 
George Wheler was an intimate friend and a disciple of Dr. 
Hickes with whom he went abroad. It was evidently through 
the influence of Dr. Hickes that he became an advocate of 
higher education for women. 

About the middle of the century Mrs. Montagu went to 
Bath-Easton to visit her sister, Mrs. Scott, and Lady Bab 
Montagu, who had chosen a life of retirement and good works. 
On her return to Sandleford, Mrs. Montagu wrote as follows 
to Mr. Gilbert West: 


My sister rises early, and as soon as she has read prayers to their 
small family, she sits down to cut out and prepare work for 12 poor 
girls, whose schooling they pay for; to those whom she finds more than 
ordinarily capable, she teaches writing and arithmetic herself. The 
work these children are usually employed in is making child-bed linen 
and clothes for poor people in the neighborhood, which Lady Bab 
Montagu and she bestow as they see occasion. Very early on Sunday 
morning these girls, with 12 little boys whom they also send to school, 
come to my sisters and repeat their catechism, read some chapters, 
have the principal articles of their religion explained to them, and 
then are sent to the parish church. These good works are often per- 
formed by the Methodist ladies in the best of enthusiasm, but thank 
God, my sister’s is a calm and rational piety. Her conversation is 
lively and easy, and she enters into all the reasonable pleasures of 
Society; goes frequently to the plays, and sometimes to balls, ete. 
They have a very pretty house at Bath for the winter, and one at Bath 
Easton for the summer; their houses are adorned by the ingenuity of 
the owners, but as their income is small, they deny themselves un- 
necessary expences. My sister seems very happy; it has pleased God 
to lead her to truth, by the road of affliction; but what draws the sting 
of death and triumphs over the grave, cannot fail to heal the wounds 
of disappointment. Lady Bab Montagu concurs with her in all these 


1 Plumptre, Dean: Life of Bishop Ken. 


EDUCATION 271 


things, and their convent, for by its regularity it resembles one, is 
really a cheerful place.* 


3. Higher EpucaTIon 


The lesser boarding-schools and the charity schools give no 
intimation of anything even approximating the higher educa- 
tion of women. But that topic was not neglected. And it is 
of interest to take up in chronological sequence the various 
expressions of opinion as to the kind of education women should 
have. 


The first influential writer advocating a large and liberal 
curriculum for women was a foreigner,? the 
famous Anna van Schurman of Utrecht. She ae RE EE 
was, indeed, the most famous learned woman of 
the seventeenth century, not only in Holland, but in the entire 
world of letters. As a child she gave such indication of unusual 
power that her father’s interest and ambition were aroused, and 
he gave her perfect freedom and sympathetic codperation in the 
development of her tastes. There was no regular plan or dis- 
cipline in her education. She merely followed out, in art, in 
handicrafts, in letters, every new interest of her singularly alert 
and responsive mind. Till she was twenty-eight, art in some 
form was her chief occupation. She carved portraits in box- 
wood, modeled them in wax, etched them on glass or copper, 
and cut medallions in ivory. She did fine needlework and intri- 
cate embroidery, and worked tapestry. Specimens of her scis- 
sors-work are still preserved in the Schurman museum at 
Franeker and show a dexterity that must have been remarkable 
even in that day of exquisite cut-paper.* And she excelled in 

1 “Mrs. Scott described their life in her novel, Millennium Hall, by a Gen- 
tleman on his travels, 1762, as there was a popular prejudice then against a 
female author.” Mrs. Sarah Scoit (the widow of George Lewis Scott) wrote 
several novels, under the pseudonym “Henry Augustus Raymond,” between 
1750 and 1776. Millennium Hall reached a fourth edition by 1778. 

2 Birch, Una: Anna van Schurman: Artist ; Scholar ; Saint. 


3 Cut-paper work was an accomplishment in which ladies of various countries 
took pride. Deschamps in his account of painters mentions a Mrs. Block. He 


272 THE LEARNED LADY 


the fashionable accomplishment of writing in foreign alphabets. 
She sang delightfully, and played on the cymbal, the lute, and 
the violin. Her interest in the technical side of music is evi- 
denced by her correspondence with noted musicians such as 
Huyghens, Hooft, and Bannius. 

But gradually during the amateurish delights of these occu- 
pations and through the frivolities of a gay life there had been 
growing in Anna’s mind a desire for serious work. And from 
twenty-eight to forty-eight she gave herself to the learned pur- 
suits on which her contemporary renown was based. She be- 
came known throughout Europe and the most extravagant 
recognition was accorded her. As the finest Latinist in Utrecht 
she was chosen to write the ode on the founding of the Univer- 
sity in that city. She was named the “Star of Utrecht.” Gis- 
bert Voét, the Rector of the University, taught her Hebrew, 
Syriac, and Chaldee, and influenced her to devote years to a 
textual study of the Bible. Beverwyck, who through admira- 
tion for her had become a convinced feminist, dedicated his 
treatise De Excellentia Femini Sexus to her as “the most won- 
derful woman of her day.” Cats wrote poems to her as the 
Wonderstuk of the age. Her Ethiopian Grammar was greeted 
as a marvel by the scholars of the Dutch universities. Jean 
Louis Balzac congratulated himself on coming to know “cette 
merveilleuse fille.” Descartes was one of her close friends. She 
says she “‘excelled in cutting paper; whatever others produced in a print by a 
graver, she produced with a pair of scissors; she executed all kinds of subjects, 
as landscapes, sea-pieces, animals, flowers; and what is most astonishing, por- 
traits, in which the resemblance was preserved in the highest degree. This 
new art of expressing representations of objects upon white paper became the 
object of universal curiosity, and the artist was encouraged by all the courts of 
Europe. The Elector Palatine offered her a thousand florins (equal to about a 
hundred guineas) for three little pieces, which she refused. ... The works of 
this woman are in design and taste extremely correct, and may best be com- 
pared with the engravings of Mallon. When they are pasted upon black paper, 
the places where the white paper is cut away in strokes, represent those of a 
graver or pen, and are in the highest degree neat, true, bold, and distinct.” 
(The Gentleman’s Magazine, 1761, p. 338). The cut-work paper in England 
never equalled that of Mrs. Block until Mrs. Delany’s herbarium in the late 


eighteenth century out-distanced all competitors. But Mrs. Delany’s work 
was more like painting while Mrs. Block’s was like engraving. 


EDUCATION 273 


corresponded on terms of equality with theologians like Jacob 
Lydius and Fredereck Spanheim and M. de Saumaise of Leyden 
University. Caspar van Baerle eulogized her as “a second 
Sempronia, a better Sappho, a new Pallas.” She became almost 
an object of pilgrimage, royal personages being among those 
attracted by her great fame. The Queen of Poland, the 
Duchesse de Longueville, and Christina of Sweden with an 
escort of Jesuit priests were among those who made visits of 
state to “the incomparable Virgin.” 

The last twenty years of Anna van Schurman’s life were 
given entirely to mystical religion under the guidance of Jean 
de Labadie of whose community she became the most influen- 
tial member. But in the preceding period many topics of con- 
temporary interest held her attention. Chief among these was 
the right of women to free mental development. Dr. Rivet, 
Professor of Theology at Leyden, and her intimate friend, 
once wrote to her that ordinary women were debarred from 
equality with men by “the sacred laws of Nature.” Anna re- 
sponded in lively protest and said that he based his arguments 
on custom and not on reason. In time she wrote a book embody- 
ing her own views on the subject. It was published by Elze- 
vir at Leyden in 1641 under the title De ingenii muliebris ad 
doctrinam et meliores litteras aptitudine. In 1659 the book was 
translated into rather stiff and cumbersome English, by “C. B.,” 
doubtless Clement Barksdale, an Oxford man, a prolific trans- 
lator from the Latin and much interested in education. He was 
master of a free school at Hereford, and later had a successful 
private school at Hawling in Cotswolds. He must have had 
especial interest in the education of women, for in 1675 he wrote 
a Letter touching a College of Maids or a Virgin Society. Mr. 
Barksdale’s translation appeared under the title, The Learned 
Maid; or, Whether a Maid may be a Scholar. Logick Exercise 
Written in Latine by that incomparable Virgin Anna Maria & 
Schurman of Utrecht. With some Epistles to the famous Gassen- 
dus and others. The book opens with a quotation from Fr. 
Spanhemius in which he eulogizes Anna van Schurman as “the 


Q74 THE LEARNED LADY 


utmost Essay of Nature in this Sex.” The translation is dedi- 
cated to the “Lady A. H.,” probably the Lady Anne Hudson 
to whom Gerbier dedicated his Elogium Heroinum. ‘There had 
evidently been an earlier translation than Barksdale’s, for he 
says, ‘“‘ This strange maid, being now the second time drest up in 
her English Habit, cometh to kiss your hand.” Two transla- 
tions into English within eighteen years indicate a considerable 
interest in the arguments advanced. Yet the form of the book 
was difficult and unattractive as is indicated by the phrase 
“Logick Exercise.” Every argument is thrown into stiff syl- 
logistic form. The portion of the book entitled “A Refutation 
to the Adversaries” is somewhat more natural and lively. 
Stripped of their pedantry the arguments against the education 
of women and the answers to these arguments are as follows: 


Objection: The wits of women are too weak for the study of letters. 

Answer: Not all men have “heroical wits” yet they are not ex- 
cluded from studies. No claim is made that all women should study, 
but only those of “‘at least indifferent good wits.”” Weakness of wit 
may be aided by study. 

Objection: Women have no opportunity to prosecute studies, no 
academies or schools being open to them. 

Answer: There are parents and tutors. 

Objection: Knowledge is a useless acquirement since women are 
shut out from “‘Politicall, Eclesiasticall, or Academicall” offices. 

Answer: Though they gain not the Primary end of public usefulness 
they yet gain an important secondary personal end. 

Objection: Since a little knowledge will suffice for a woman in her 
vocation an “‘Encyclopedy”’ of knowledge is superfluous. 

Answer: There is ambiguity in the word “‘vocation.” Does it mean 
that woman belongs to private as against public life? Then many 
gentlemen in private life should be shut out from studies. Does it 
mean woman’s special calling to Family Life? But all human beings 
have a right to a personal development, a “Universal Calling” separ- 
ate from and above their special vocation. 

Objection: Women do not care for studies, and nothing should “be 
done invita Minerva, as we say, Against the Hair.” 

Answer: The assumption that women do not care to apply them- 
selves to studies becomes logically important only when it is proved 
of women after excitation and opportunity in studies. ““_No man can 
rightly judge of our Inclination to studies, before he hath encouraged 


— oa 


EDUCATION | 275 


us by the best reasons and means to set upon them: and withall hath 
given us some taste of their sweetness.” 


The arguments given and the objections answered lead to the 
statement: 


Wherefore our Thesis stands firm: A Christian Maid, or Woman may 
conveniently give herself to Learning: Whence we draw this Consectary, 
that Maids may and ought to be excited and encouraged by the best 
and strongest Reasons, by the Testimonies of wise men: and lastly by 
the examples of illustrious Women, to the embracing of this kind of life, 
especially those who are above others provided of leisure, and other 
means and aides for their studies. And, because it is best, that the 
mind being seasoned with Learning from the very Infancy: therefore 
the Parents themselves are chiefly to be stirred up, as we suppose, and 
to be admonished of their duty. 


In a presentation of the appropriate range of the studies of 
women Anna includes the entire circle of Liberal Arts and 
Sciences as convenient for the Head of a Christian Maid. 


But specially let regard be had unto those Arts which have neerest 
alliance to Theology and the Moral Virtues, and are Principally sub- 
servient to them. In which number we reckon Grammar, Logick, 
Rhetoric: especially Logick, fitly called The Key of all Sciences: and 
then, Physicks, Metaphysicks, History, etc. and also the knowledge 
of Languages, chiefly of the Hebrew and Greek. All which may ad- 
vance to the more facile and full understanding of Holy Scriptures: 
to say nothing now of other Books. The rest, i.e. Mathematicks, (to 
which is also referred Musick) Poesie, Picture, and the like, not illib- 
eral Arts, may obtain the place of pretty Ornaments and ingenious 
Recreations. Lastly, those studies which pertain to the practice of 
the Law, Military Discipline, Oratory in the Church, Court, Uni- 
versity, as less proper and less necessary, we do not very much 
urge. And yet we in no wise yield that our Mazd should be excluded 
from the Scholastick Knowledge or Theory of those; especially not 
from understanding the most noble Doctrine of the Politicks or Civil 
Government. 


The whole book is a eulogy of learning as a specific for all the 
ills of mind or heart. Anna quotes from the great Erasmus to 
the effect that “nothing takes so full possession of the fair Tem- 
ple of a Virgin’s breast, as learning and study, whither, on all 
occasions she may fly for refuge,” and hence nothing can so 


‘276 THE LEARNED LADY 


effectually oppose vanity and light-mindedness. Studies will 
make a woman sufficient unto herself in leisure hours. Studies 
perfect and adorn the intellect; they conduce to reverence for 
the most beautiful, the most excellent, and so to love of God; 
they fortify the mind against heresies, they teach prudence, 
they destroy fear, they put courage into the heart; they give a 
delight that is like “Divine gladness”; and they mollify and 
sweeten manners. In fine, the liberal pursuit of learning brings 
the whole nature into conformity with “the Rule of right 
reason.” Who, then, would shut women out from delights so 
laudable, virtues so desirable? 

The whole book gives such an impression of high-minded 
earnestness, it is so strenuous and sincere, affirmative argu- 
ments are so elaborately established, and adversaries are so 
elaborately crushed, that it becomes a distinct anti-climax to 
realize what, after all, was the extent of her demand. She vir- 


tually asks nothing more than that rich girls of good minds . 


shall be allowed and even encouraged to study at home under 
tutors, with the proviso that they make no public use of their 
learning, that they remember St. Paul’s injunction to women 
“to be olxoupyces, keepers at home,” and that they make 
learning the handmaid of piety. Anna van Schurman was ask- 
ing for what she herself had had. And her conception seems 
somewhat less modest when we realize that no scholastic digni- 
ties, no authorship, no public offices, could put a woman of to- 
day so distinctly in the lime-light of royal and learned favor as 
was this retiring Anna in her quiet little home at Utrecht. 


The immediate follower of Anna van Schurman was Bathsua 
Bathsua Pell, Pell, better known as Mrs. Makin.! She is one 
Mrs. Makin of the most significant personages connected 
(fl. 1641-1673) = With the education of girls in the mid-seven- 
teenth century. Her father was a rector in Southwick, Sussex. 

1 Monroe, Paul: Cyclopedia of Education ; Watson, Foster: “Mrs. Bathsua 
Makin and the Education of Gentlewomen,” Atalanta, July, 1895; Granger: 


Biographical History (2d ed.), vol. 11, p. 392; Ballard: Memoirs, Preface; Jesse: 
House of Stuart, vol. 1, p. 250. 


ma 
Gulpsit 


tori 
get 
Ow. Myf 


it: 
» non moritura v 


si Poehra 


sted fc 


cr 


P 


Forma. nikil, 


UA MAKIN 
Marshall.” 


st unique print by 


ATHS 


MRS. B 


From un engraving in 


“Facsimile copy from an almo 


, Vol. II, page 39 


1816. 


Woodburn’s Gallery of Rare Portraits, 


EDUCATION QTT 


He died in 1616 and his wife in 1617, leaving three children. 
Thomas became gentleman of the bedchamber to Charles I, 
but went to America in 1635. The younger brother, John (1611-— 
1685), was early noted as a student. At thirteen he entered 
Trinity at Cambridge, being even then “as good a scholar as 
some masters of arts.”” At twenty he was reported to know 
Hebrew, Greek, Latin, Arabic, Italian, French, High and Low 
Dutch. By the time he was twenty-three he had specialized in 
mathematics. He held important mathematical posts under 
Cromwell; and, later, under Charles II, he was given a valuable 
living. Bathsua Pell had her brother’s talent for languages, and 
like him had an early repute for learning. About 1641, when 
she was perhaps about thirty, she was appointed tutoress to 
Princess Elizabeth, the six-year-old daughter of Charles I. The 
learned tutoress was apparently at liberty to follow her own 
ideas of education, and for several years she led the sad little 
Princess into such delights as might be found in the languages 
and theology. She boasted of her pupil’s proficiency, saying 
that at nine she could “write, read, and in some measure un- 
derstand, Latin, Greek, Hebrew, French and Italian.”! Mrs. 
Makin had other distinguished pupils. Among them was Lucy 
Davies, daughter to Sir John Davies, Attorney-General for 
Ireland, and better known as author of Nosce Teipsum, and 
Eleanor Truchett, fluent author of half-mad books of proph- 
ecy.2, Lucy married the sixth Earl of Huntington. After his 
death in 1655, when their son was but six years old, as Count- 
ess Dowager of Huntington, she evidently gave her time and 
interest in her retirement to the studies begun under Mrs. 
Makin (possibly in the Putney Schools before 1649), who says 
of her in 1673: “ I am forbidden to mention the Countess Dow- 


1 Some light is thrown on the curious phrase “read, write, and in some 
measure understand,” by William Greenhill’s dedication of his Exposition of 
the first five chapters of Ezekiel to the Princess Mary in 1644-45. After men- 
tioning other instances of feminine precocity he praises her for “writing out 
the Lord’s Prayer in Greek and some texts of Scripture in Hebrew.” It was 
calligraphy rather than language that was here in question. 

2 See p. 37. 


278 THE LEARNED LADY 


ager of Huntington (instructed sometimes by Mrs. Makin) howe 
well she understands Latin, Greek, Hebrew, French and Spanish ; 
or what a proficient she is in Arts, subservient to Divinity, in 
which (if I durst I would tell you) she excells.” 

Mrs. Makin makes enthusiastic mention of other learned 
ladies, but does not make it clear whether they had been under 
her instruction. Lady Mildmay could not, she says, be justly 
omitted. Then there was Mrs. Thorold, daughter of Lady Carr 
in Lincolnshire, who was “excellent in Philosophy, and all 
sorts of Learning.” She cites also “Dr. Love’s daughters,” ! as 
“still fresh in the memory of men” for their “ Worth and Excel- 
lency in Learning.” 

In April, 1649, John Evelyn and a party of ladies visited 
“the schools or colleges for gentlewomen” at Putney. In all 
probability Mrs. Makin had charge of this institution. Cer- 
tainly no other known Englishwoman would have been so 
competent, or would have had such prestige as a school-mis- 
tress, and her Essay of 1673 shows that she remained in the 
educational field. Accompanying the Essay is a Prospectus for 
a school she had recently opened. “If any enquire where this 
education may be performed, such may be informed that a 
school is lately erected for Gentlewomen, at Tottenham High 
Cross, within four miles of London, on the road to Ware, where 
Mrs. Makin is governess who was formerly tutoress to the 
Princess Elizabeth, daughter to King Charles the First. 
Where, by the blessing of God, Gentlewomen may be in- 
structed in the Principles of religion, and in all manner of 
sober and virtuous Education: more particularly in all things 
ordinarily taught in other schools.” These things “ordinarily 
taught in other schools” are listed as “‘Dancing, Musick, Sing- 
ing, Writing, Keeping accompts.” Half the time in Mrs. 
Makin’s school was to be spent on this portion of the curri- 


1 Probably daughters of Dr. Nicholas Love (d. 1630), Head-Master of 
Winchester College in 1601, and chaplain to James I. In 1673 the daughters of 
Christopher Love (1618-1651), Puritan minister from Cardiff, would be of too 
recent date to correspond to the description. 


EDUCATION 279 


culum. The other half was to be “employed in gaining the 
Latin and French tongues.” Greek, Hebrew, Italian, and 
Spanish were optional subjects, but were offered by the 
Governess who had a “competent knowledge” of all of them. 
The language requirements could not have been extensive 
since ““Gentlewomen of eight or nine years old, that can read 
well, may be instructed in a year or two (according to their 
parts) in the Latin and French tongues.” Something in the way 
of natural history was attempted. Mrs. Makin announces, 
“Repositories also for Visibles shall be prepared; by which, 
from beholding the things, Gentlewomen may learn the Names, 
Natures, Values, and Use of Herbs, Shrubs, Trees, Mineral- 
pieces, Metals, and Stones,” a sort of laboratory course in 
botany and mineralogy. Astronomy, geography, and especially 
arithmetic and history were also offered in a “general” way. 
Domestic science was not omitted, though oddly bound up 
with a course in art: “Those that please may learn Limning, 
Preserving, Pastry, and Cookery.” The principle of electives 
was in full force. “Those that think one language enough for 
a Woman, may forbear the Languages, and learn only Ex- 
perimental Philosophy.” In fact, students were allowed to 
take “more or fewer” of the courses offered as they might 
incline. The regular rate was twenty pounds per annum, but 
a “competent improvement in the Tongues, and the other 
things aforementioned” was to command an additional fee. 
Very astutely Mrs. Makin constituted the parents the judge 
as to the excellency of their children’s attainments. The notice 
closes with this fair offer: “Those that think these Things 
Improbable, or Impracticable may have further account 
every Tuesday, at Mr. Mason’s Coffee-house, in Cornhill, 
near the Royal Exchange; and Thursdays, at the ‘Bolt and 
Tun,’ in Fleet Street, between the hours of three and six in 
the afternoon, by some person whom Mrs. Makin shall ap- 
point.” 3 

1 This person was a Mr. M. Lewis whose Grammar and whose Rules for Point- 
ing and Reading Grammatically she used in her school. 


280 THE LEARNED LADY 


This course of study, desultory, inchoate, fragmentary, as 
it is, is nevertheless of great historic interest. It is the first 
known attempt to organize a scheme of definite and solid 
study for girls. However superficial the work, it was based on 
a novel and important conception of the value of genuine 
knowledge in languages and science for girls as well as for 
boys. It must have been as doubtful and epoch-making an 
event in a community to have its girls sent to Tottenham 
High Cross, as for the earliest students to go to Vassar. Un- 
fortunately the inception of this schoo] is all we know about 
it. A knowledge of its actual work, its success, a list of its 
students, would serve as an illuminating commentary on the 
general attitude towards learning for girls in the last quarter 
of the seventeenth century. 

That Mrs. Makin expected opposition is shown by the re- 
markable Essay that was issued with her Prospectus. The full 
title of the Essay is, An Essay to Revive the Antient Education 
of Gentlewomen, in Religion, Manners, Arts, & Tongues, with 
an Answer to the Objections against this Way of Education. 
London, Printed by J. D. to be sold by Tho. Parkhurst, at the 
Bible and Crown, at the lower end of Cheapside. 1673. In her 
opening paragraphs Mrs. Makin recognizes that an age in 
which ‘“‘Learning and Virtue are counted Pedantick Things, 
fit only for the Vulgar” is not a propitious time to undertake 
an advanced scheme for the education of girls. She trenchantly 
summarizes the prevalent attitude towards learned women; 
and then bravely sets forth her own creed. She also empha- 
sizes the modesty of her demands: 


Custom, when it is inveterate, hath a mighty influence: it hath the 
force of Nature itself. The Barbarous custom to breed Women low, is 
grown general amongst us, and hath prevailed so far, that it is verily 
believed (especially amongst a cort of debauched Sots) that Women 
are not endued with such reason, as Men; nor capable of improvement 
by Education, as they are. It is lookt upon as a monstrous thing, 
to pretend the contrary. A Learned Woman is thought to be a Comet, 
that bodes Mischief, when ever it appears. To offer to the World the 
liberal Education of Women is to deface the Image of God in Man, it 


EDUCATION 281 


will make Women so high, and men so low, like Fire in the House-tops 
it will set the whole world in a Flame. These things and worse than 
these, are commonly talked of, and verily believed by many, who 
think themselves wise Men: to contradict these is a bold attempt; 
where the Attempter must expect to meet with much opposition. ... 
I verily think, Women were formerly Educated in the knowledge of 
Arts and Tongues, and by their Education, many did rise to a great 
height in Learning. Were Women thus educated now, I am confident 
the advantage would be very great: the Women would have Honour 
and Pleasure, their Relations Profit, and the whole Nation Advantage. 
..- Were a competent number of Schools erected to Educate Ladyes 
ingenuously, methinks I see how ashamed Men would be of their 
Ignorance, and how industrious the next Generation would be to wipe 
off their Reproach. I expect to meet with many Scoffes and Taunts 
from inconsiderate and illiterate Men, that prize their own Lusts and 
Pleasure more than your Profit and Content. I shall be the less con- 
cern’d at these, so long as I am in your favour; and this discourse may 
be a Weapon in your hands to defend yourselves, whilst you endeavour 
to polish your Souls, that you may glorify God, and answer the end 
of your Creation, to be meet helps to your Husbands. Let not your 
Ladiships be offended, that I do not (as some have wittily done) plead 
for Female Preéminence. To ask too much is the way to be denied all. 
God hath made Man the Head, if you be educated and instructed, as 
I propose, I am sure you will acknowledge it, and be satisfied that you 
are helps, that your Husbands do consult and advise with you (which 
if you be wise they will be glad of) and that your Husbands have the 
casting-Voice, in whose determinations you will acquiesce. 

The main portion of the Essay is addressed to a “much- 
honoured and worthy friend” who has expressed considerable 
doubt as to the wisdom of her educational projects. The tone 
of his letter is indicated by the following summary: 

Your great question is, Whether to breed up Women in Arts and 
Tongues, is not a mere new Device, never before practised in the 
World. This you doubt the more: Because Women are of low Parts, 
and not capable of Improvement by this Education. If they could be 
improved, you doubt, whether it would benefit them? If it would bene- 
fit them, you enquire where such Education may be had? or, whether 
they must go to School with Boys? to be made twice more impudent 
than learned. At last you muster up a Legion of Objections. 

These doubts and objections are then discussed seriatim. To 
establish her contention that women have been educated in 


282 ‘THE LEARNED LADY 


arts and sciences in the past she gives an unchronological, un- 
critical list of women who attained distinction in Greece and 
Rome and in Bible times. Miriam, “a great poet and philoso- 
pher,” the women who danced before David (singing songs 
“‘compos’d it’s like by themselves”), Huldah the Prophetess, 
“who dwelt (we may suppose) in a college where women were 
bred up in good literature”; Anna and Phebe; Triphena, Tri- 
phosa, and Persis; Priscilla who instructed Apollos; Timothy’s 
mother Eunice and grandmother Lois; and Philip’s four daugh- 
ters, make up from Sacred Writ a list intended to allay the 
anxieties of a devout churchman as to the effect of learning 
on female piety. Mrs. Makin was really forced to get as 
many Biblical recruits as possible, since her opponents regu- 
larly massed their forces in the Garden of Eden with the Sin 
of Eve as their impregnable fort. 

To the lay mind examples from classic lands might prove 
authoritative, hence there follows a list of Greek and Roman 
ladies of learning. If the heroes of ancient story are but ideal- 
ized representations of actual men, why, reasons Mrs. Makin, 
may we not suppose some actual wise women as the begetters 
of the legends of Minerva, the Muses, and the Sibyls? From 
history she cites ““Sempronia, Cornelia, Lelia, Mutia, Cleobu- 
lina, Cassandra, Terentia, Hortensia, Sulpitia, Portia, Hel- 
vitia, Enonia, Paula, Albina, Pella, Jenobia, Voleria, Proba, 
Eudocia, Claudia,” and many others; a list too undiscriminat- 
ing to be convincing, but certainly creditable to Mrs. Makin’s 
industrious learning. After this wide preliminary sweep, Mrs. 
Makin takes up different realms of attainment. “Women have 
been good Linguists”; ““Women have been good Oratours”; 
“Women have understood Logic”; “‘Women have been pro- 
found Philosophers”; ‘“‘Some Women have understood the 
Mathematics”; ““Women have been good Poets”; “Women 
have been good Divines” — such are the theses she is prepared 
to defend. The mathematics are most thinly provided with 
examples, Hypatia of Alexandria and “A Lady of late, her 
name I have forgot,” who printed divers tables, being the only 


EDUCATION 283 


instances she can summon. The richest assemblage of names 
comes under the linguists and the poets. The purpose of this 
ardent and prolonged search of times past and present is to 
show that women are not by act of creation always of “low 
parts”; that some, indeed, have approached the standards set 
by men. This being the case, women should have full educa- 
tional opportunities. Mrs. Makin is careful, however, to hedge 
in even this proposition with qualifications. Education belongs 
only to the Christian maid, to the maid of excellent mind, to 
the maid of wealth and leisure. A woman’s education is for her 
own development and pleasure and for the service of her fam- 
ily. Any social, public, utilitarian use of it is not for a moment 
contemplated. A further qualification is that education is not 
absolutely essential: 


I do not mean that it is necessary to the esse, to the subsistence, 
or to the salvation of women, to be thus educated. Those that are 
mean in the world have not the opportunity for this education. Those 
that are of low parts, though they have opportunity, cannot reach 
this. Ex quovis ligno not fit Minerva. My meaning is, persons that 
God hath blessed with the things of this world, that have competent 
natural parts, ought to be educated in knowledge. That is, it is much 
better they should spend the time of their youth to be competently 
instructed in those things usually taught to gentlewomen at schools, 
and the over-plus of their time to be spent in gaining arts and tongues 
and useful knowledge, rather than to trifle away so many precious 
minutes, merely to polish their hands and feet, to curl their locks, to 
dress and trim their bodies. 


With these limitations the proposition may be allowed to stand 
that the virtuous, talented woman of leisure should be granted 
educational advantages. But there are objections still to be 
met. The more important of these may be summarized with 
Mrs. Makin’s answers: 


1. “If we bring up our Daughters to Learning no Persons will adven- 
ture to Marry them.”’ 

Answer: Learned men would surely choose learned wives, and it 
_ will be long before there are learned women enough to overstock the 
market. 


284 THE LEARNED LADY 


2. ““When Solomon praised the good housewife no mention was 
made of her learning.” 

Answer: The daily tasks of Solomon’s housewife required consider- 
able knowledge. “‘To buy wool and flax, to dye scarlet and purple, 
requires skill in Natural Philosophy. To consider a field, the quantity 
and quality, requires knowledge in Geometry. To plant a vineyard, 
requires understanding in Husbandry. She could not merchandise 
without Arithmetic. She could not govern so great a family well with- 
out knowledge in Politics and Economics. She could not look well to 
the ways of her household, except she understood Physic and Chirur- 
gery. She could not open her mouth with wisdom and have in her 
tongue the law of kindness without Grammar, Rhetoric and Logic.” 
But at the best, Solomon’s good housewife seems to Mrs. Makin 
hardly more than “an honest, well-bred, ingenious, industrious Dutch- 
woman,” not at all the sort of talented gentlewoman of the leisure 
classes for whom the new liberal education is to be provided. 

3. “Women are of ill Natures, and will abuse their Education.”’ 

Answer: Men also abuse their Education. 

4. “They will be proud and not obey their Husbands; they will be 
pragmatick and boast of their Parts and Improvements.” 

Answer: “‘To this I Answer; What is said of Philosophy, is true of 
Knowledge; a little Philosophy carries a man from God, but a great 
deal brings him back again; a little knowledge, like windy Bladders, 
puffs up, but a good measure of true knowledge, like Ballast in a Ship, 
settles down, and makes a person more even in his station; *t is not 
knowing too much, but too little that causes the irregularity.” 

5. “The end of Learning is Publick Business” in which women have 
no concern. 

Answer: The private ends of learning are as important as the public 
ends. Moreover, this objection would apply to all men in private life. 
| 6. “Women do not desire Learning.” 

Answer: “Neither do many Boys.” 

7. “Women are of Low Parts.” 

Answer: “So are many Men.” 

8. Women are soft, tender, delicate, weak. 

Answer: Then strengthen them by Education. 

9. A learned gentlewoman is ridiculous because contrary to custom. 

Answer: This custom has a bad ground. Men wish women to be 
fools, that they may remain slaves. A bad custom should be broken 
that good customs may prevail. 

10. The final and crucial objection is elaborately stated: “How 
shall time be found to teach children these things here proposed? 
Boys go to school ordinarily from seven till sixteen or seventeen, and 


EDUCATION 285 


not above one in four attain so much knowledge in the Tongues as 
to be admitted into the University, where no great accuracy is re- 
quired, and they learn nothing else usually besides a little History. 
Gentlewomen will not ordinarlly be sent out so soon, nor is it con- 
venient they should continue so long. Further, half their time, it is 
supposed, must be spent in learning those things that concern them 
as Women. Twice as many things are proposed to be taught Girls in 
half the time, as Boyes do learn, which is impossible.” 


The rest of the article is taken up with an analysis of Lilly’s 
Grammar, to show how slow and burdensome and distasteful 
are its methods, and to an analysis of the short cuts to knowl- 
edge devised by Mrs. Makin and Mr. Lewis. For instance, 
Lilly’s long rule for substantives is simplified into, “Any word 
with a, an, or the in front of it is a substantive.” If you wish to 
distinguish between a noun and an adjective you have but to 
note that nouns change when you make a plural, adjectives do 
not. And so on with many shrewd little tricks of learning 
- whereby the parts of speech may be known at a glance, the na- 
ture of said parts of speech not being in question. The whole of 
Mrs. Makin’s scope and plan of education seems superficial 
and uncodrdinated until seen in the light of the contemporary 
training of boys as she describes it. Then her system seems 
alive and energetic in its effort to slough off non-essentials. 

In passing, Mrs. Makin frequently utters wise and far-see- 
ing opinions concerning the education of girls. 

If any desire to know what they should be instructed in? I answer: 
I cannot tell where to begin to admit Women, nor from what part of 
Learning to exclude them, in regard of their Capacities. The whole 
Encyclopoedia of Learning may be useful some way or other to them. 
“Grammar, Rhetorick, Logick, Physick, the Tongues, Mathematics, 
Geography, History, Musick, Painting, Poetry” —all of these should 
be open to women, and all could be advantageously used by them. 


With regard to the pleasures of the student she says, “Delight 
and Pleasure are the attendants on Learning.” 
There is no pleasure greater than what is founded in Knowledge; 


it is the First Fruits of Heaven, and a glimpse of that Glory we after- 
wards expect. There is in all an innate desire of knowing, and the 


286 ’ THE LEARNED LADY 


satisfying this is the greatest pleasure. Men are very cruel, that give 
_ them leave to look at a distance, only to know they do not know; to 
make any thus to tantalize is a great torment. 


She is especially scornful of the vain and frivolous women of 
that frivolous age, those women whose time is spent in “mak- 
ing Points for Bravery, in dressing and trimming themselves 
like Bartholomew-Babies, in Painting and Dancing, in making 
Flowers of Coloured Straw, and building Houses of stained 
Paper, and such like vanities.” 


A book nearly contemporaneous with Mrs. Makin’s Pro- 
Poulain de la spectus is entitled The Woman as Good as the 
Bacie Man, or the Equality of Both Sexes. Written 
originally in French and translated into English by A. L. The 
French original was by Poulain de la Barre whose De I’ Egalité 
des deux Sexes was published in 1673. The translation by A. L. 
came out in 1677. The Preface by the author and that by the 
translator show that they enter upon their work with consider- 
able trepidation, knowing that they write against the general 
view. The probable opponents are classified as “‘all the Igno- 
rant and most of the Learned,” but the author proceeds val- 
iantly on his mission of enlightenment. “Men,” he says, 
“have always kept women in subjection,” moved thereto by a 
‘secret Instinct,” as if they had for their own dominance 
“‘Letters-Patent from the Author of Nature.” Women have 
likewise accepted the doctrine of their own inferiority so that 
dependence and subjection have come to seem their normal 
condition. M. de la Barre states the prevalent idea and his 
own radical departure from it in the following passage: 

Let every Man (in particular) be asked his Thoughts of Women 
(in general) and that he would surely confess his Mind; he will tell you 
without doubt, That they were not made but for Man; That they 
are fit for nothing, but to Nurse and Breed little Children in their Low 
Ages; and to mind the House. It may be the more Ingenious will add, 
That there are many Women that have indeed Parts, and Conduct; 
but that even they who seem to have most, when they are nearly ex- 
amined, discover still some-what that speaks their Sex: That they 


EDUCATION 287 


have neither Solidity, nor Constancy; nor that depth of Judgment 
which they think to find in themselves: And that it hath been an 
effect of Divine Providence, and Wisdom of Men, to have barred them 
from Sciences, Government, and Offices: That it would be a pleasant 
thing indeed, to see a Lady in the Chair (in quality of a Professor) 
teaching Rhetorick, or Medicine; marching along the Streets, followed 
by Officers, and Sergeants; putting in Execution Laws: Playimg the 
part of a Counsellour; pleading before Judges: Seated on a Bench, to 
Administer Justice in Supream Courts: Leading of an Army; giving 
Battel; and Speaking before States, and Princes, as the Head of an 
Embassy. 

I do confess, such Practices would surprize us; but for no other 
reason, but that of Novelty. For, if in modelling of states and estab- 
lishing the different Offices that compose them, Women had been like- 
wise called to Functions; we should have been as much accustomed to 
have seen them in Dignity, as they are to see us. And should have 
found it no more strange to have seen a Lady on a Throne, than a 
Woman in a Shop.! 


M. de la Barre admits that many women may properly be 
accused of “‘Idleness, Softness, and Ignorance,” but gives the 
astonishingly modern explanation that no fair estimate of the 
ability of women can be made until they have been trained by 
right education and stimulated by public responsibility and 
opportunity. He believes that if women “‘made it their busi- 
ness to study Law, they would succeed in it (at least) as well as 
we.” “Women seem born to practise Physick.” They would 
excel as ““Pastour or Minister in the Church. . . and there can 
be nothing else but custome shewn, which remove Women 
therefrom. . . . And if men were accustomed to see Women in a 
Pulpit, they would be no more startled thereat, than the Women 
are at the sight of men.” Women if rightly educated would 
show peculiar aptitude for teaching. 


If Women had studyed in the Universities with men, or in others 
appointed for them in particular, they might have entered into De- 
grees, and taken the title of Master of Arts, Doctor of Divinity, Medi- 
cine, Civil, and Cannon Law: And their genius so advantageously 
fittmg them to learn, would dispose them to teach with success. They 


1 The Woman as Good as the Man, p. 6. 


288 THE LEARNED LADY 


would find methods, and insinuating biasses, to instil their Doctrine; 
they would discover the strength and weakness of their Schollars, to 
proportion themseves to their reach, and the facility which they have 
to express themselves; and, [this] which is one of the most excellent 
talents of a good Master, would compleat and render them admirable 
Mistresses.? 


There is no reason “why a Woman of sound Judgment and 
Understanding, might not take the chaire in a court of Justice, 
and preside in all other companies.” There are no positions of 
public authority from the throne to the humblest office of state 
that should not be open to women. Even “the military Art 
hath nothing beyond others, whereof Women are not capable.” 

That women may become learned is beyond dispute, and 
they are the more to be praised because of the difficulties 
they have overcome: 

How many Ladies have there been, and how many are there still, 
who ought to be placed amongst the number of the Learned, if we 
assigne them not a Higher Sphear? The Age wherein we live hath 
produced more of these, than all the past. And as they have in all 
things run parallel with Men, upon some Particular Reasons, they 
ought more to be esteemed than they: For, it behoved them to sur- 
mount the Softness wherein their Sex is bred, renounce the Pleasures 
and Idleness, to which Custom had condemned them, overcome cer- 
tain public Impediments that removed them from Study, and to get 
above those disadvantagious Notions, which the Vulgar conceive of 
the Learned, besides, those of their own Sex in general: All this they 
have performed. And whether it be, that these Difficulties have ren- 
dered their Wit more quick and penetrating, or that these Qualities 
are the peculiar of their Nature, they have [proportionably] made 
Progress and Advancements beyond Men.? 


These may be regarded as exceptional women, but “there 
are infinite numbers of Women, which could have done no less, 
had their Advantages been Equal.” But the training given to 
girls make them believe that beauty and fine clothes should be 
their only interests. Their education seldom goes beyond 
writing and reading, and their library consists of a few little 
books of devotion. 

1 The Woman as Good as the Man, p. 12A. 2 Ibid., p. 45. 


ae 


EDUCATION 289 


Tn all that which is taught to Women, do we see anything that tends 
to solid instruction? It seems, on the contrary, that men have agreed 
on this sort of education, of purpose to abase their courage, darken 
their mind, and to fill it only with vanity, and fopperies. 


It may be said that “Learning would render Women more 
Wicked and Proud.” But only false knowledge can produce so 
bad an effect. True knowledge makes a woman humble and 
virtuous. It actually “choaks” some men to find women eager 
after knowledge. These men have “forged to themselves that 
Women ought not to Study,” and they “stand upon their 
Points, when Women demand to be informed of that which is 
Learned by Books.” But since “‘Ignorance is the most irksome 
Slavery,” and knowing the truth is a way out of it, all women 
who seek that way should be praised, not blamed. 

““We may [then] with Assurance, exhort Ladies to apply 
themselves to Study; without having Respect to the little Rea- 
sons of those who would undertake to divert them there-from. 
Since they have a Mind (as well as We) capable of knowing of 
Truth . . . they ought to put themselves in condition of avoyd- 
ing the Reproach, of having stifled a Talent, which they might 
put to use.” Learning cannot be counted useless to women 
even if they do not publicly use it. It is a personal right and 
necessity like “Felicity and Vertue.” “The Spring of reason is 
not limited; it hath in all men an equal Jurisdiction. . . . Truth 
and Knowledge are goods that admit of no prescription.” 
And, finally, the economy of the world demands that one half 
its mentality should not be debarred from the search after 
Truth. 

The sincerity of M. Poulain de la Barre might be put in 
question by the fact that he wrote in 1675 a book entitled De 
V Excellence des Hommes contre l Egalité des Sexes, but the ear- 
lier treatise maintained its popularity, for it was republished in 
1676, 1690, 1692. Of the English translation but one edition 
appeared, nor does it seem to have been well known in the sev- 
enteenth century. Mary Astell makes no use of it, perhaps be- 
cause it was too radical and uncompromising in its demand. 


290 THE LEARNED LADY 


Certainly no other defense of feminism even approached the 
work of M. de la Barre in the relentless logic with which it car- 
ried fundamental assumptions into the practical affairs of life. 


From Marie de Jars to Anna van Schurman, and then to 


Di, Goedize Bathsua Makin is a regular and recognized pro- 
Hickes (1642- gression of influence. I am unable to trace any 
auto) direct influence from Mrs. Makin, though her 


prestige and the number of her aristocratic pupils must have 
made her school one of the important factors in establishing 
new ideas. At any rate, by whatever influences brought about, 
we have, after about 1680, several significant discussions of 
liberal education for woman. One of the earliest and most sur- 
prising of these comes in a sermon by Dr. George Hickes. Its 
full title is, A Sermon Preached at the Church of St. Bridget, on 
Easter, Tuesday, being the first of April, 1684. Before the Right 


Honourable Sir Henry Tulse, Lord Mayor of London and Hon- 


ourable Court of Alderman, Together with the Governors of the 
Hospital, wpon the Subject of Alms-giving. By George Hickes, 
D. D. Dean of Worcester, and Chaplain in Ordinary to his Majesty. 

At the close of this sermon on the reasons for alms-giving 
Dr. Hickes emphasizes the great obligation resting on those 
‘*Who heap up Riches, and can not tell who shall gather them, 
I mean those to whom God hath given great Estates, and no 
Children.” Such people seem to him set apart by Providence 
for the endowing of works of public beneficence. In a compre- 
hensive analysis of the practical ways in which they could use 
their wealth we come upon the following remarkable sugges- 
tion: ' 

I will also put you in mind of establishing a Found for Endowing of 
poor Maids, who have lived so many years in Service, and of building 
Schools, or Colleges for the Education of young Women, much like 
unto those in the Universities, for the Education of young Men, but 
with some alteration in the Discipline, and Oeconomy, as the nature 
of such an Institution would require. 


Such Colleges might be so ordered, as to become security to your 
Daughters against all the hazard to which they are exposed at private 


EDUCATION 291 


Schools, and likewise a security to the Government, that the Daugh- 
ters of the Land should be bred up according to the religion now estab- 
lished in it, to the unconceivable advantage of the Publick, in rooting 
out Enthusiasme, with her Daughter Schisme, both of which are up- 
held by nothing among us as much, as by the Women, who are so silly 
and deceiveable for want of Ingenious and Orthodox Education, and 
not for want of Parts. Methinks the Rich and Honourable Ladies of 
the Church of England, the Elect Ladies of her Apostolical Commun- 
ion should be zealous to begin, and carry on such a work, as this; 
which upon more accounts than I have mentioned, would make the 
Daughters of Israel be glad, and the Daughters of Judah and Jerusa- 
lem rejoyce. 


Had Dr. Hickes read Anna van Schurman’s May the Chris- 
tian Maid be a Scholar? Or had he seen the Prospectus and Es- 
say of Mrs. Makin which had appeared eleven years before he 
preached his Sermon to the Lord Mayor? 

Among the clergy of the English Church the Reverend 
George Hickes must take rank as the earliest and one of the 
most important defenders of higher education for women. His 
Easter sermon antedated Mary Astell, and his claim was more 
generous and daring than hers. In 1710, when he published 
Controversial Letters, he included letters from Susanna Hopton 
and Lady Gratiana Carew, and he considered them valuable 
aids in the presentation of religious truth. It was he who called 
Mrs. Bovey “the Christian Hypatia,” and he was the chief 
encourager of Elizabeth Elstob. 

Besides these individual manifestations of approval Dr. 
Hickes contributed to the cause of the right education of girls 
by a translation of Fénelon’s Traité de l'éducation des filles 
(1688), under the title Instructions for the Education of a 
Daughier, by the Author of Telemachus. To which is Added, A 
Small Tract of Instructions for the Conduct of Young Ladies of 
the Highest Rank. With Suitable Devotions Annexed. Done into 
English and Revised by George Hicks. In putting the French 
treatise into an English dress Dr. Hickes has not hesitated to 
make such changes as would bring the book closer to English 
needs. This book was so widely read and so influential in Eng- 


292 THE LEARNED LADY 


land that rather full extracts may profitably be given. But it 
should be noted in advance that the general tone of this trea- 
tise is much more conventional, much less liberal, in its ideas of 
education and of opportunity for self-expression than was Dr. 
Hickes in his Easter sermon, and in his encouragement of in- 
dividual learned women. But it must be remembered that 
here he is not writing for mature women with superior minds, 
but for young girls of high social rank to whom he wishes to 
recommend the most exalted ideals of character, behavior, and 
general culture. Modest indeed are the requirements in exact 
learning: 


Teach her to Read and Write correctly. It is shameful, but ordi- 
nary, to see Gentlewomen, who have both Wit and Politeness, not able 
yet to pronounce well what they read; they either hesitate, or else 
chant, as it were, in reading; whereas they ought to pronounce their 
Words with a plain and natural Tone, such as is also firm and uniform. 
They are still more grossly deficient in Orthography, or in Spelling 
right, and in the manner of forming or connecting Letters in Writing. 
Accustom her then, from the first, to make her Lines strait, and to 
have her Character neat and legible. 

It would also be requisite for her to understand a little Grammar of 
her Native Language; by which it is not meant, she should be taught 
by Rule, as Boys are, Latin: Use her only without Affectation, not to 
take one Tense for another; to express herself in proper Terms; to 
explain clearly her Thoughts, with Order, and after a short and concise 
manner. Thus will you put her into a Method, by which she may 
teach her own Children afterwards to speak well and truly, without 
any formal Study. It is well known, that in Old Rome, Sempronia the 
Mother of the Gracchi, contributed very much to the forming of the 
Eloquence of her Sons, who became afterwards so great Men. 

She ought also to understand the Four first great Rules of Arithme- 
tic; you may make good use of them, in teaching her thereby to keep 
your Accompts. This is indeed a troublesome Employment to a great 
many; but an Habit from her Childhood, joyn’d with the Easiness of 
keeping readily, by the Help of these Rules, all Sorts of Accompts, tho’ 
never so intricate, will very much diminish this Dislike. Now ’t is 
sufficiently known how much Exactness of Accompts conduces to the 
good Order in Families. 

After these instructions, which are to hold the first Rank, I believe 
it will not be quite useless, to allow young Ladies according to their 


EDUCATION 293 


Leisure, and their Capacity, the reading of some select prophane 
Authors, that have nothing Dangerous in them for the Passions. This 
is the Means to give them a Distaste of most Plays and Romances; 
Give them therefore into their Hands Greek and Roman Histories, in 
the best Translations; they will see in them wonderful Instances of 
Courage, of Faithfulness, of Generosity, and of the great Contempt of 
their own private Advantage, whenever the Publick was in the Bal- 
ance. Let them not be ignorant of the History of Britain, which hath 
also some very great Instances of Brave (no less than of Bad) Actions, 
that hardly any thing in Antiquity will be found to exceed: Those 
Illustrious Patterns which have been set by their own Nation and by 
Persons too of their own Sex, will be apt more strongly to influence 
them. 

Though Natural Philosophy seems not to be adapted to the Under- 
standing of Women, or at least not to fall within the Bounds of what 
concerns their Duty; yet Moral Philosophy is, upon both Accounts, to 
be studied by them. Languages are next to be considered. It is com- 
monly believ’d in France, that a Lady that would be well-bred, must 
learn Italian and Spanish ; as with us, French at least. I sec nothing 
of less Benefit than this Study, unless it be where the Lady is oblig’d 
to it on account of Business. . . . Some, and those the farthest in the 
World from all Pedantry, think it would not be unreasonable for this 
End, to have them learn a little Latin. For which, there may be a 
great deal more Reason in those Countries, where this is look’d on as 
the Language of the Church; it being an inestimable Fruit and Con- 
solation, say they, to understand the Words of the Divine Service, 
whereat one is oblig’d to attend so often. Yet doubtless, every where 
the Advantages of it are not small, if but accompanied with Humility, 
and season’d with Prudence. 


To this restricted course of study is added most careful ad- 
vice as to general reading with a particular caution against 
romances. If Dr. Hickes’s advice had prevailed Steele’s Biddy 
Tipkin and Mrs. Lennox’s Arabella would never have existed: 


But, on the contrary, Young Persons, and Women especially, with- 
out Instruction and Application, have always a roving Imagination. 


1 From Instructions to a Young Princess on this point we read: “J only desire 
you to believe, that true Wisdom consists in knowing exactly your Duty; 
and whatsoever carries a Woman farther than that, is generally either danger- 
ous or unprofitable. For, to be plain, how doth it concern you, to know, whether 
the Sun or the Earth move, or after what manner Thunder and Tempest are 
form’d in the Skies, and a Hundred other Things as little necessary as these?” 


294 THE LEARNED LADY 


For want of solid Nourishment, their Curiosity violently turns them 
towards Vain and Dangerous Objects. Such as have a little Capacity, 
are in Danger to set up for Wits; they read, for this, all the Books that 
may feed their Vanity; they are extremely affected with Romances, 
with Plays, with the Relations of Chimerical Adventures, in which 
profane Love bears a mighty Share; they fill their Minds with empty 
Notions; and, using themselves to the Magnificent Language of 
_ Heroes, or Heroins, in Romances, they spoil themselves hereby for 
Converse in the World: For all these fine airy Sentiments, these gener- 
ous Passions, these strange Adventures, which the Author of the Ro- 
mance, or Play, hath invented merely for Pleasure, bear no sort of 
proportion, either to the True Motives, which are generally the Springs 
of our Actions in the World, and upon which all our Affairs do turn; 
or to the Mistakes, which are commonly met with in all that is here 
undertaken. 

A poor raw Girl, whose Head is fill’d with the moving and surpris- 
ing Strains, which have charmed her in her Reading, is astonished, 
not to find in the World real Persons, who may answer to these Ro- 
mantick Heroes. Fain would she live like those imaginary Princesses, 
who are in the Romances, that is, always charming, always adored, 
always above all kind of Want: What a Disgust must it be then, for 
her to descend from this Heroical State, down to the meanest Parts 
and Offices of Housewifery. 


A second limit is set in cases where the roving imagination 
may carry young women to subjects too high for them: 


Some carry their Curiosity yet much farther still, and set them- 
selves even to decide Matters of Religion, as much as if they had 
studied in the Schools of Divinity twice Seven Years; and with a 
Magisterial Air, are for determining some of the most Knotty Ques- 
tions that divide Men of the greatest Learning and Capacity; and for 
settling the Bounds of Truth betwixt the several contending Parties, 
as if they were capable of the Employment. 


From “An Address to the Right Honourable the Lady ; 
From the Translator,” we get a list of books considered by Dr. 
Hickes as advisable reading for English girls: 


It must be acknowledg’d, that there is not less difficulty in the 
Chusing good Books to busy one’s self withal in Solitude, than good 
Friends to Entertain one in Conversation. Those which I would recom- 
mend to a Young Lady, next to the Hoty ScriprurEs, are, THE 
Wuote Duty or Man; Tue Lapy’s Caine; and THe GovERN- 


EDUCATION 295 


MENT OF THE ToncueE. After these let her read Dr. Cave’s Prmative 
CuristiAnity, to give her an Idea of the Lives and Manners of the 
Ancient Christians; with which she may join his Lives or THE 
Aposties, and, A CoMPANION FOR THE FESTIVALS OF THE CHURCH OF 
ENGLAND, by Robert Nelson, Esq. She ought not likewise to be un- 
acquainted with A Srmrrous ProposaL To THE LADIES, FOR THE 
ADVANCEMENT OF THEIR TRUEST AND GREATEST INTEREST, in Two 
Parts; nor with THE CurisTIAN RELIGION AS PROFEsS’D BY A DAUGH- 
TER OF THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND: These Two, being written by one 
of her own Sex, may probably serve to make a deeper Impression upon 
her, and will be both Instructive and Delightful. To these, if you 
please, you may add, THe Lapy’s New Years Girt; and, Jost Mras- 
URES OF THE Pious INstTITUTION oF YoutH, by Mr. Monro. But, 
chiefly, the Two Volumes of Toe Curist14N PATTERN, may very 
Profitably be recommended to her; the Christian Exercises and En- 
tertainments, in the Second, she will find of very peculiar Service and 
Consolation to her, in all the several Stages of Life; and if she can be 
brought to be in love with the Character herein of Philothea, the 
Work is soon done. The Meditations and Soliloquies of St. Augustine, 
deserve likewise to be of the Number of her more intimate Compan- 
ions; together with the DEVOTIONS IN THE ANCIENT Way oF OFFICEs, 
witH PsatMs, AND Hymns, AND PRAYERS FOR EVERY Day IN THE 
WEEE, publish’d by Dr. Hickes: Nothing can be ever sweeter or finer 
than some of the Meditations, and particularly the Hymns. To these 
let her add a most excellent Book, called, THz Otp Reticion; with 
the Winter Eventne ConFERENCEs; which, together with solid In- 
struction, will be very divertive: Both by Dr. Goodman. That when 
she approaches the Solemn Assemblies, she may do it with that Un- 
derstanding and Devotion which she ought, let her read Comber or 
Bennet upon the Liturgy. That she may read the Scriptures in her 
Closet with a greater Relish, let her peruse Mr. Boyle’s Considerations 
on their Stile. For the Psalms, wherein I must needs suppose her par- 
ticularly conversant, she may have Hatton’s Psalter, or Patrick’s 
Paraphrase, which are very plain, and will be of excellent Use. The 
rest of the Practical Works of this last Author, will not be unworthy 
her Acquaintance, but especially THE Paras LE oF THE Prngrm, the 
Pleasantness and Easiness of which will incite her to read forward, 
and will much help to inspire a lovely Idea of Religion. For the same 
Reason, that I recommend the last, I would likewise Taz Martyr- 
poM OF THEODORA, with some few Pieces of like Nature. And the 
Tetemacuts of our Author will be better, sure, for her, than any 
Romance or Novel besides: This, though written in Prose, is perhaps 
the most compleat Poem that several Ages have produced, for the 


296 THE LEARNED LADY 


Subject and Disposition of it. She may be directed likewise to the 
Psyche of Dr. Beaumont; to Dr. Woodford’s Poetical Paraphrases on 
the Psalms and Canticles; Sir Richard Blackmore’s Paraphrase on 
Job; the Davideis and some of the Pindaricks of Mr. Cowley. If she be 
Curious, her Time will not be lost in turning over the best Histories 
and Memoirs. For Plays, there is great Danger in giving her but a 
Taste of them, tho’ there should be some few that may be read, not 
only Innocently, but Usefully: And great Caution will be required, 
not to be hurt by some that are the best Written, and not to fall by 
them into sundry Inconveniences and Temptations, which may not 
so presently, perhaps, appear; which the Principles laid down in this 
Treatise of Education do sufficiently evince. For Sermons, at her 
leisure Hours, when she is disposed to read them, there is abundant 
Choice. Let her not affect to read such as are too Learned, or above 
her Capacity; and especially, let her avoid all such as savour of a 
Party, and that may tend to sowre her with Disputes either Civil or 
Religious. For the Study of Morality, S—neca’s Morats, Abstracted 
by L’Estrange, is almost the only Piece, that I should offer to her, 
besides the Incomparable Essays of Mr. Collier, and his ANTONINUS. 
I mention but a few, among many others excellent in this kind, be- 
cause I would not have her distracted by too great Variety of Reading. 


|" The final admonition implies the danger always in the back- 
ground of the most liberal eighteenth-century mind, and that 
is that learning, even hedged-in and expurgated learning, 
might make girls bold and unfeminine: 


That which remains next, is to win young ladies to beware of the 
Reputation of being Witty; such a Reputation being constantly 
attended with very great Perils and Inconveniences to them. For if 
you take not Care hereof, they that are of a brisk lively Spirit, will 
continually be intriguing, will be forward to speak of everything, and 
be criticising on Matters beyond their Capacity; while they affect to 
shew their Wit, and study to be applauded when they are but trouble- 
some by their Niceness. If you can but give them a Relish for the 
true Delicacy, they will presently be asham’d of this Affectation of 
Wit and Humour; and so will avoid splitting upon those dangerous 
Shelves, which such a Temper is ordinarily exposed to. Show them 
sweetly that the Virgin Delicacy, the less it is touched, is the more 
admired. .. . A Maid ought not to speak but for Necessity; nor then 
but with an Air of Diffidence and Deference: she ought not likewise to 
talk of things which are above the common reach of Young Women, 
even though she, herself, may, perhaps, be instructed in them. 


EDUCATION 297 


It would be interesting to know whether the next and most 
pronounced advocate of higher education, Mary Astell 
Mary Astell, had read Dr. Hickes’s sermon. (1666-1789))") 3 | 
Miss Astell ! was born in Newcastle in 1666. Her father died 
when she was twelve; the uncle who is supposed to have edu- 
cated her died when she was thirteen; her mother died when 
she was eighteen. Beyond these facts nothing is known of her 
early life. A record of the education of Anne Killegrew, Anne 
Kingsmill, and Mary Astell would be a social document of 
great significance for the reign of Charles II. But it was a rec- 
ord too slight to be kept. Of the books these young ladies read, 
the studies they pursued, of the schools they may have at- 
tended, of the tutors they had, we get no hint. Of the early in- 
fluences that led them to achievements unusual in their day 
and circle we know nothing. When we first meet them their 
formal education is complete and we can surmise its details 
only by doubtful inferences based on later attainments. 

At about twenty Mary Astell went to London and there she 
lived till her death in 1731, Chelsea being the part of the city 
with which she was most definitely associated. There is no 
available record of the first seven years of her London life. But 
during this time she must have been doing thorough and con- 
secutive reading in history, philosophy, theology, and politics. 
And she must have read analytically, critically, with vigorous 
independent judgment, for at twenty-seven she was well ready 
for the era of controversy on which she then entered. Her style 
was also so matured in her first published work as to indicate a 
disciplined mind and pen. 

In 1693-94 she was in correspondence with John Norris con- 
cerning his theory that God should be the sole object of human 
love. So acute, so devout, so ably expressed, were Miss Astell’s 
letters that Mr. Norris won her consent to an anonymous pub- 
lication of the correspondence in 1695 under the title, Letters 
concerning the love of God. In his Preface Dr. Norris said that 


1 Smith, Florence: Mary Astell. First full presentation of the life and works 
of Mary Astell. 


298 THE LEARNED LADY 


he could not express the value he set upon Miss Astell’s letters 
either as to their ingenuity or their piety, “the former of which 
might make them an entertainment for an angel, and the latter 
sufficient (if possible) to make a saint of the blackest devil.” 
He said he had never met any discourses that had so enlight- 
ened his mind and enlarged his heart, had so taken possession 
of his spirit, and had exerted such “a general and commanding 
influence over his whole soul.” 

While carrying on this discussion with Mr. Norris another 
' subject had been more definitely occupying Miss Astell’s ac- 
tive mind, and in 1694 she had published her most original and 
important work, A Serious Proposal to the Ladies for the Ad- 
vancement of their true and greatest interest. This appeared in 
July, 1694, and by 1697 the fourth edition came out. “By a 
Lover of her Sex” was the only indication of authorship. In 
1700 she published Some Reflections upon Marriage, a discussion 
based on the unhappy experiences of her neighbor in Chelsea, 
the Duchess of Mazarine. The years 1704-05 show her great- 
est activity. In Moderation Truly Stated (1704) she answered 
Owen’s Moderation a Virtue, and in the Preface discussed 
Davenant’s recently published Essays on Peace and War. In 
A Fair Way with Dissenters and their Patrons (1704) she at- 
tempted to answer Defoe’s Shortest Way with Dissenters, while 
in a Postscript she carried on her analysis of Owen’s views on 
Moderation. In An Impartial Enquiry into the Causes of Re- 
bellion and Civil War in this Kingdom she took up. another 
phase of politics — religious controversy, showing herself a 
believer in Stuart doctrines of Church and State. The Christian 
Religion as Profess’d by a Daughter of the Church of England 
(1705) showed the insidious dangers of latitudinarianism and 
deism within the Church, and defended the Christian religion 
as reasonable and resulting in moral excellence. In 1709 ap- 
peared her last pamphlet, Bart’lemy Fair, or an Enquiry after 
Wit, an attack on Shaftesbury’s Letter Concerning Enthusiasm, 
which she, however, wrongly attributed to Swift. The Preface 
to Bart’ lemy Fair is a bitter invective against the Kit-Kat Club. 


EDUCATION 299 


The pamphlets thus briefly listed are sufficient to show with 
what sustained energy Mary Astell entered into the discus- 
sions most vital in her day. Education, religion, politics, and 
social questions held her entire attention. She was never side- 
tracked into anything light or gay. We find no indications 
that she had any interest in art or general literature, that she 
had any of the recognized accomplishments, that she put any 
stress on scientific or linguistic attainments. She was tempera- 
mentally a controversialist, a propagandist. She was too seri- 
ous, too much in earnest, to play with a subject. Her disap- 
provals were never softened by any humorous recognition of 
human foibles. For the graces and amenities of style she had 
slight regard. But she was beyond any woman and most men 
of her day in her command of the weapons of satire and irony. 
She could pierce to the heart of a sham or a sophistry, and she 
was merciless in her analysis of a trifling, corrupt, or irre- 
ligious life. She stands as a new type of learned woman. No 
- other woman had ideas so rigorously thought-out or so firmly 
expressed. She taught with authority, not with the timidity, 
self-distrust, or reticence supposedly feminine in her time. She 
did not, write for money or for fame. She wrote because she 
had a message. 

Many of the actual causes championed by Mary Astell are 
now dead issues, but her ideas concerning women, their educa- 
tion, their increased freedom of action, even in some measure 
their economic independence, led her into a field of contro- 
versy the problems of which are even yet but imperfectly 
solved. In the cause of feminism she did pioneer work quite 
amazing in its challenge of contemporary opinion and in its 
tempered wisdom. Her fundamental assumption was that the 
potentialities of women must be considered undetermined un- 
til they have been given full opportunities for preparation, 
and tested by real tasks. “Women are from their very In- 
fancy,” she says, “debarr’d those advantages with the want 
of which they are afterwards reproached, and nursed up 
in those vices which will hereafter be upbraided to them. 


300 THE LEARNED LADY 


So partial are Men to Expect Bricks when they afford no 
Straw.” 

Eleven years later in the Preface to Reflections on Marriage, 
in the edition of 1706, she wrote with greater bitterness: 


In the first place, Boys have much Time and Pains, Care and Cost 
bestowed on their education, Girls have little or none. The former are 
early initiated in the Sciences, are made acquainted with Antient and 
Modern Discoveries, they Study Books and Men, have all imaginable 
encouragement; not only Fame, a dry reward now-a-days, But also 
Title, Authority, Power, and Riches themselves which purchase all 
things, are the reward of their improvement. The latter are re- 
stricted, frown’d upon, beat, not for but from the Muses; Laughter 
and Ridicule that never-failing Scare-Crow is set up to drive them 
from the Tree of Knowledge. But if in spite of all difficulties Nature 
prevails, and they can’t be kept so ignorant as their masters would 
have them, they are stared upon as Monsters, Censur’d, Envyd and 
every way discouraged, or at the best they have the Fate the Proverb 
assigns them: Virtue is praised and starved. 


Even more caustic is her outburst against the women who 
accept the theory of their inferiority and hug their chains: 


She’s a Fool who would attempt their Deliverance or Improve- 
ments. No, let them enjoy the great Honour and Felicity of their 
tame, submissive and depending Temper! Let the Men applaud, 
and let them glory in this wonderful Humility! Let them receive the 
Flatteries and Grimaces of the other Sex, live unenvied by their own, 
and be as much belov’d as one such Woman can afford to love another! 
Let them enjoy the Glory of treading in the Footsteps of their Prede- 
cessors, and of having the Prudence to avoid that audacious attempt 
of soaring beyond their Sphere! Let them Houswife or Play, Dress and 
be pretty entertaining Company! Or, which is better, relieve the Poor 
to ease their own Compassions, read pious Books, say their Prayers, 
and go to Church, because they have been taught and us’d to do so, 
without being able to give a better Reason for their Faith and Prac- 
tice! Let them not by any means aspire to being Women of Under- 
standing, because no Man can endure a Woman of Superior Sense, or 
would treat a reasonable Woman civilly, but that he thinks he stands 
on higher Ground, and that she is so wise as to make Exceptions, in 
his Favour, and to take her Measures by his Directions; they may 
pretend to Sense, indeed, since meer Pretences only render one the 


' EDUCATION 301 


more ridiculous! Let them, in short, be what is call’d very Women, for 
this is most acceptable to all sorts of Men; or let them aim at the Ti- 
tle of good devout Women, since Men can bear with this; but let them 
not judge of the Sex by their own Scantling: For the great Author of 
Nature and Fountain of all Perfection, never design’d that the Mean 
and Imperfect, but that the most Compleat and Excellent of his 
Creatures in every Kind, should be the Standard to the rest. 


In spite of these very real elements of discouragement Mary 
Astell proposed a remedy. The basic assumptions of her Se- 
rious Proposal in 1694 are nearly identical with those of Bath- 
sua Makin’s Prospectus, twenty-one years earlier. They agree 
that girls have minds worth training, that education is their 
natural right, their most reliable safeguard, and a permanent 
source of strength and happiness. But here the likeness ends. 
Mrs. Makin’s inchoate plans contemplated little more than the 
‘ordinary school for housewifery and accomplishments, with 
the addition of solid learning for those who could be lured 
into it. The total training did not extend beyond the years 
a girl would ordinarily spend in a boarding-school, hence the 
genuine learning she could gain would be almost negligible. 
Mary Asitell’s plan was much more comprehensive. It was 
for women as well as for girls. To her “Religious Retire- 
ment” might go women tired of the world, young women 
waiting the arrangement of a suitable marriage, heiresses de- 
siring to escape pursuit, spinsters anxious for some honorable 
retreat from a derisive world. All would find a serene and 
ordered life. But no vows were to be taken. In fact, one impor- 
tant purpose of the college was to provide England with vir- 
tuous and accomplished wives, through whom social regen- 
eration might be brought about. 

Tn thus educating wives, however, Mary Astell had no icono- 
clastic or alarming notions of female dominance. She is as 
positive as the author of The Ladies Calling, or of Halifax him- 
self, in her conception of the husband as the head of the house. 
She says: 


1 Smith, Florence: Mary Astell, p. 99. 


302 THE LEARNED LADY 


She then who Marries, ought to lay it dewn for an indisputable 
Maxim, that her Husband must govern absolutely and intirely, and 
that she has nothing else to do but to Please and Obey. She must not 
attempt to divide his Authority, or so much as dispute it; to struggle 
with her Yoke will only make it gall the more, but must believe him 
Wise and Good in all respects the best, at least he must be so to her. 
She who can’t do this is no way fit to be a Wife, she may set up for 
that peculiar Coronet the antient Fathers talk’d of, but is not quali- 
fied to receive the great Reward which attends the eminent Exercise 
of Humility and Self-denial, Patience and Resignation, the duties that 
a Wife is call’d to.! 


Education can fortify and guide married women and can 
give them unending private satisfaction, but can in no way 
alter their status or secure them any freedom. 

To the unmarried woman the college offered the only means 
so far devised whereby they could not only escape from the 
odium of a single life, but could have a chance for activity 
along lines chosen in accordance with their tastes and capaci- 
ties. 

The aims of the college and the plans as outlined were so 
reasonable and put forward with so much eloquence that they 
attracted favorable attention. Part II of the Proposal was 
dedicated to the Princess Anne, and it is to her that we must 
give the credit for a subscription of £10,000 for the necessary 
buildings.? And it is practically certain that Bishop Burnet, at 
this time tutor to the young Duke of Gloucester and so of easy 
access to Anne, is the one to whom we must ascribe the with- 
drawal of that subscription and along with it the royal sanction 
so essential an element in the success of the plan. Bishop 
Burnet saw in this proposed “Lay Monastery” a source of 
plots and cabals dangerous to the Church. And Anne was too 
devout and narrow-minded a churchwoman to run any such 
risks. So the plan came to no practical realization. 

Though the time was probably not ripe for such a college, it 
is significant that in the aristocratic circle where Mary Astell 


1 Reflections on Marriage, p. 29. Quoted in Miss Smith’s Mary Asiell, p. 89. 
2 Smith, Florence: Mary Astell, p. 22. 


EDUCATION 303 


moved there was apparently considerable favorable discussion 
of the project. In 1697 Thomas Burnet wrote to the Electress 
Sophia of Mary Astell as “a young Ladie of extraordinary 
piety and knowledge as any of the age” and comments on her 
“two little books of proposals to the Ladies” as showing “both 
her zeal and judgment in thee advyces given to her sex, for the 
reformation of manners, living, studies, and conversations of 
the ladies.” ! In the same year Defoe, in his Essay on Projects, 
referred with praise to Mary Astell, though not agreeing with 
her plans in detail. In 1697, also, Evelyn commented favorably 
on Mary Astell: He said that he could not omit some acknowl- 
edgment of the satisfaction he had received from her “most 
sublime” writings, and he adds concerning her college, “Be- 
sides what lately she has proposed to the Virtuous of her Sex, 
to shew by her own Example, what great Things, and Excel- 
lencies it is Capable of, and which calls to mind the Lady 
of that Protestant Monastery, Mrs. Farrer, not long since at 
Geding in Huntington-shire.” ? George Wheler, in A Protestant 
Nunnery, refers to “A Serious Proposal written by an ingen- 
ious Lady” and gives it the further compliment of adopting 
some of its ideas. George Hickes, in his Instructions for the 
Education of a Daughter (1708), gives A Serious Proposal and 
The Christian Religion, by Mary Astell, in the list of books 
which he commends to young women. Robert Nelson, in an 
Address to Persons of Quality (1715), also praised the Proposal 
to Ladies as made “‘by a very Ingenious Gentlewoman, which 
was then well approved by several ladies and others.” 4 

The wits of the time are usually accredited with derisive 
laughter at the female college. But the chief attacks were from 
Swift in The Tatler in 1709, fifteen years after the Proposal, 
Part I, and twelve years after the second part. Swift’s Tatler 
articles followed immediately on Mary Astell’s Bart’lemy Fair, 
and were really not so much an attack on a college for women as 
an attempt to answer Mary Astell’s satiric commentary on the 


1 Smith, Florence: Mary Astell, p. 70. 2 Evelyn, John: Numismata. 
3 Smith, Florence: Mary Astell, p. 73. 4 Tbid., p. 76. 


304 THE LEARNED LADY 


Kit-Kat Club, and on Steele and Swift in particular. It was a 
sort of quid pro quo in which Swift seized upon the weapons 
most available. The coarseness of the description of the college 
must have been very offensive to Mary Astell as a similar vul- 
garity of attack in Three Hours after Marriage must have 
offended Lady Winchilsea. Swift represents the professors 
of the college to be Madonella (Mary Astell), Epicene (Mrs. 
Manley), and Mrs. Elstob, a union that would probably have 
been as irritating to Mrs. Manley as it was to her virtuous co- 
adjutors in academic chairs. The break-up of the college is due 
to a company of rakes to whom the ladies collegiate give joyous 
welcome. 

Steele’s attacks on Mary Astell are much milder. He repre- 
sents her as “Mrs. Comma, the great Scholar,” who defends 
her desired seclusion by herself announcing to would-be callers 
that she is “‘not at home.” Again, she is put in as the foreman 
of a jury in a Court of Honour, and is described as a “pro- 
fessed Platonist that had spent much of her time in exhorting 
the sex to set a just value upon their persons, and to make the 
men know themselves.” 

That the attention attracted by Mary Astell’s writings was 
not all contemptuous has been already indicated. Her books 
were, however, but one source of her influence. In her later life 
not only was she of sufficient repute to make her home in Chel- 
sea a sort of minor learned salon, but she had considerable 
personal influence among younger women of like aspirations. 
Of three of her friendships with learned women we have some 
knowledge. The most intimate of these was with Lady Eliza- 
beth Hastings, twenty-two years her junior. Lady Betty went 
to Ledstone to live in about 1705 and was thereafter only oc- 
casionally in London, so they could not have had much con- 
tinuous personal association, but they apparently found them- 
selves in immediate accord on vital subjects. Lady Betty and 
her sisters on the remote Yorkshire estate almost realized in a 
small way Mary Astell’s ideal of a religious retirement. If the 
correspondence between them were only extant it would be 


EDUCATION 305 


invaluable. Elizabeth Elstob is also given as one of Mary As- 
tell’s friends. Miss Elstob was in London from 1709 to 1715 
and came to know Miss Astell during this period. It was to 
Miss Elstob that Ballard wrote for information about Miss 
Astell when he wished to write her biography, which might 
seem to argue a known friendship between the two. But 
against any theory of real intimacy is the fact that Miss Astell, 
a woman of substance and wide influence, did not exert herself 
in Miss Elstob’s behalf when she was left penniless and driven 
into obscurity. The most noted of Mary Astell’s literary 
friends was Lady Mary Wortley Montagu. The culmination 
of that friendship in the indignant championship by Mary As- 
tell of Lady Mary’s Turkish Letters appears in an essay dated 
1724, but the friendship was of much earlier date. It was not 
by wealth or position or beauty or social charm that Mary 
Astell gained and held her friends. In person she was “‘ill- 
favoured and forbidding,” in manner she was abrupt and even 
rough in repelling what displeased her. She defended her own 
leisure and followed her own plans with defiance of all social 
conventions. She had the instincts of a recluse. She was deeply 
religious, austere to the point of asceticism, and her friend- 
ships were no matter of mutual admiration and easy compli- 
ances. She was a flaming advocate of Lady Mary against all 
detractors, but she stoutly combated Lady Mary’s religious 
indifferentism. It was by sheer force of intellectual ability, 
moral earnestness, and profound convictions that Mary Astell 
gained her general repute and by sincerity and an unexpected 
ardor of devotion that she held her friends. 


Mary Astell’s Serious Proposal appeared in 1694 with a sec- 
ond edition in 1695. In 1696 there appeared ,, Huseyin Des 
another feminist pamphlet the full title of fence of the Fe- 
which was An Essay in Defence of the Female ™© Se (2698) 
Sex in which are inserted the characters of A Pedant, A Squire, A 
Beau, A Vertuoso, A Poetaster, A City-critick. C. In a Letter to a 
Lady by a Lady. A second edition in 1696, a third in 1697, a 


306 THE LEARNED LADY 


fourth in 1791, and an undated but later edition, testify to its 
popularity. This pamphlet was long attributed to Mary As- 
tell, but both internal and external evidence are against her 
authorship. There seem to be reasons for ascribing it to Mrs. 
Drake, the sister of the Mr. James Drake who wrote the com- 
mendatory poem and essay published with the Defence of the 
Female Sex.1 Whoever the author was she certainly deserves 
the credit of being the most brilliant woman writer of her 
period. In her Preface she says: 


There have been women in all Ages, whose Writings might vie with 
those of the greatest Men, as the Present Age as well as past can 
testifie. .. . Their names are already too well known, and celebrated 
to receive any additional Lustre from so weak Encomiums as mine. 
. .. 1 pretend not to imitate, much less to Rival those Illustrious La- 
dies who have done so much Honour to their Sex, and are unanswerable 
Proofs of what I contend for. I only wish, that some Ladies now liv- 
ing among us (whose names I forbear to mention in regard to their 
Modesty) wou’d exert themselves, and give us more recent Instances, 
who are both by Nature and Education sufficiently qualified to do it, 
which I pretend not to. ; 


The Essay opens with a statement that women must plead 
their own cause, since men no longer enter the lists in their be- 
half. The most recent woman’s advocate, William Walsh, she 
dismisses with scant praise: 


Those Romantick days are over, and there is not so much asa Don 
Quixote of the Quill left to succor the distressed Damsels. ’T is true a 
Feint of something of this Nature was made three or four years since 
by one; but how much soever his Eugenia may be oblig’d to him, Iam 
of Opinion the rest of her Sex are but little beholding to him. For as 
you rightly observ’d, Madam, he has taken more care to give an Edge 
to his Satyr, than force to his Apology; he has play’d a sham Prize, 
and receives more thrusts than he makes... . He levels his Scandals 
at the whole Sex, and thinks us sufficiently fortified, if out of the Story 
of Two Thousand Years he has been able to pick up a few Examples of 
Women illustrious for their Wit, Learning or Vertue. . . . [have neither 
Learning nor Inclination to make a Precedent, or indeed any use of 


1 See article by A. H. Upham in Journal of English and German Philology, 
vol. xu, No. 2, pp. 262-76; Smith, Florence: Mary Astell, Appendix 11. 


EDUCATION 307 


Mr. W’s labour’d Common Place Book; and shall leave Pedents and 
School-Boys to rake and tumble the Rubbish of Antiquity, and mus- 
ter all the Heroes and Heroins they can find. 


The Essay takes up no such serious and practical topics 
as Mary Astell discusses. The curious question proposed is, 
“Whether the time an ingenious Gentleman spends in the 
Company of Women, may justly be said to be misemploy’d, or 
not.” The opinion to be combated is that of men who declare 
the company of women to be irksome and unprofitable. The 
author gives the old argument that in souls there is no male 
and female, and brings Scripture proof that woman was ex- 
pressly created as a companion for man. If the divine plan has 
been interfered with by the disqualification of women the cause 
is to be found not in their minds or natures but in their lack of 
education. Men should no more exult over being wiser than 
women than they would congratulate themselves on conquer- 
ing a man whose hands were tied. 

But women, even without regular education, know more 
than they are supposed to know. At boarding-schools, to 
be sure, they learn only needlework, dancing, singing, music, 
drawing, painting, and other accomplishments; and of lan- 
guages they know only their mother tongue and French, 
‘now very fashionable and almost as familiar amongst Women 
of Quality as Men.” But after school days they have abundant 
leisure and the world of classic literature is open to them in 
translations. Ovid, Tibullus, Juvenal, Horace, Plutarch, Sen- 
eca, and Cicero may be read by the woman who knows only 
her mother tongue, and Dryden has already given “Divine 
Samples” of the sweetness and majesty of Virgil. The graces 
of France and Italy are equally at woman’s command. Follow- 
ing this account of foreign, especially classic literature, is an 
energetic passage, very modern in tone, attacking the concep- 
tion dominant in the Augustan age that the term “learning” 
applied only to a knowledge of the dead languages. 


308 THE LEARNED LADY 


Nor can I imagine for what good Reason a Man skill’d in Latin and 
Greek, and vers’d in the Authors of Ancient Times shall be call’d 
Learned; yet another who perfectly understands Italian, French, High 
Dutch, and the rest of the European Languages, is acquainted with 
the Modern History of all those Countries . . . shall after all this be 
thought Unlearned for want of those two Languages. Nay, though he 
be never so well vers’d in the Modern Philosophy, Astronomy, Ge- 
ometry, and Algebra, he shall notwithstanding never be allow’d that 
honourable Title. .. . Thus you shall have ’em allow a Man to be a 
wise Man, a good Naturalist, a good Mathematician, Politician, or 
Poet, but not a Scholar, a learned Man, that is no Philologer. For my 
part I think these Gentlemen have just inverted the use of the Term, 
and given that to the knowledge of words, which belongs more prop- 
erly to Things. I take Nature to be the great Book of Universal 
Learning, which he that reads best in all, or in any of its Parts, is the 
greatest Scholar, the most learned Man. 


Furthermore, ignorance of Latin is no such drawback 
when one considers the English language and its riches. Who 
is nobler than Mr. Shakespeare? Whose grief more awful than 
Mr. Otway’s? What tenderer Passion than in the Maid’s 
Tragedy? Whose thoughts more beautiful and gallant than 
Mr. Dryden’s? Her “‘Indignation, Compassion, Grief, are all 
at the Beck of these dramatists.” Who can rival Sir George 
Etheredge, Sir Charles Sedley, for “neat Raillery and Gal- 
lantry”? Who has such strong “‘Wit and pointed Satyr” as 
Mr. Wicherley? Who can offer such “sprightly, gentile, easie 
Wit” as Mr. Congreve? For critics, who can more justly point 
out beauties and defects than Mr. Dennis and Mr. Rymer? If 
for poetry we are inclined, what more ravishing than the fancy 
of Cowley and the gallantry of Waller? For elevation of soul 
and reverence are there not the Fairy Queen and Paradise 
Lost? Then as for “‘satyrists,”’ there are Mr. Butler and Mr. 
Oldham. For morals there are sermons, pious, solid, eloquent. 
For essays, Lord Bacon, Sir Walter Raleigh, Mr. Osborn, Sir 
Wm. Temple, Sir George Mackenzie, Sir Roger L’Estrange. 

The second portion of the Essay answers those who accuse 
women of inconstancy, dissimulation, impertinence, and van- 
ity. These, the author maintains, are imperiections of human 


EDUCATION 309 


nature, not especia!ly of women; and her method of proof is to 
show typical masculine exemplifications of these defects. Un- 
der vanity are a “Bully,” a “Scourer,” a “Fop Poet,” a 
“Beau,” a “Sloven”; these being men who disqualify them- 
selves for agreeable social intercourse by a too emphatic and 
egregious desire to bring themselves into notice. 


Of these the most voluminous Fool is the Fop Poet who. . . has al- 
ways more Wit in his Pockets than any where else, yet seldom or never 
any of his own there. Esop’s Daw was a Type of him; for he makes 
himself fine with the Plunder of all Parties. He is a Smuggler of Wit, 
and steals French Fancies without paying the customary Duties. 
Verse is his Manufacture; For it is more the labour of his Finger than 
his brain. . . . He talks much of Jack Dryden and Will Wycherley, and 
the rest of that Set, and protests he can’t help having some respect 
for ’em, because they have so much for him, and his Writings... . 
Once a Month he fits out a small Poetical Smack at the charge of his 
Bookseller, which he lades with French Plunder new vampt in Eng- 
lish, small Ventures of Translated Odes, Elegies and Epigrams of Young 
Traders, and ballasts with heavy Prose, of bis own... . He is the 
Oracle of those that want Wit and the Plague of those that have it... . 
Men avoid him for the same Reason they avoid the Pillory, the secu- 
rity of their Ears. 


The “Pedant” and the “Country Squire” are both block- 
heads, and thus unfitted for rational society. “For my part, I 
think the Learned and Unlearned Blockhead pretty equal; for 
*t is all one to me, whether a Man talk Nonsense, or unintelli- 
gible Sense.” These characters are especially effective. Not 
Pope himself has a more trenchant and sharply antithetic pic- 
ture of the ‘‘Vertuoso.”” Contemporary public opinion as to 
the uselessness of the students of grasses, flies, bugs, shells, 
coins, etc., received concise and picturesque statement in the 
Defence. 


What improvements of Physick, or any useful Arts, what noble 
Remedies, what serviceable Instruments have these Mushrome, and 
Cockel-shell Hunters oblig’d the World with? For I am ready to re- 
cant if they can shew so good a Med’cine as Stew’d Prunes, or so 
necessary an Instrument as a Flye Flop of their own Invention and 
Discovery. ... 1 wou’d not have any Body mistake me so far, as to 


310 THE LEARNED LADY 


think I wou’d in the least reflect upon any sincere, and intelligent 
Enquirers into Nature, of which I as heartily wish a better knowledge, 
as any Vertuoso of ’em all. You can be my Witness, Madam, that I 
us’d to say, I thought Mr. Boyle more honourable for his learned La- 
bours, than for his Noble Birth; and that the Royal Society, by their 
great and celebrated Performances, were an Illustrious Argument of 
the Wisdom of the August Prince, their Founder of Happy Memory; 
and that they highly merited the Esteem, Respect and Honour paid ’em 
by the Lovers of Learning all Europe over. But though I have a very 
great Veneration for the Society in general, I can’t but put a vast dif- 
ference between the particular Members that compose it. 


The character of a “Beau” is keen and minute in observae 
tion. No coquette was more admirably dissected. The later 
Tatler pictures are inferior in brightness and pointed detail. 
The whole account is readable, laughable. Impertinence is de- 
fined as the quality of busying one’s self with the trivial, and 
forcing these petty affairs on the attention of the uninterested. 
The author responds in lively fashion to those who count this a 
peculiarly feminine trait: 


Thus, when they hear us talking to, and advising one another about 
the Order, Distribution, and Contrivance of Household Affairs, about 
the Regulation of the Family, the Government of Children and Servants, 
the provident management of a Kitchin, and the decent ordering of a 
Table, the suitable Matching and convenient disposition of Furniture, 
and the like, they condemn us for impertinence. Yet they may be 
pleased to consider, that as the affairs of the World are now divided 
betwixt us, the Domestick are our share, and out of which we are rarely 
suffer’d to interpose our Sense. They may be pleased to consider like- 
wise, that as light and ineonsiderable as these things seem, they are 
capable of no Pleasures of Sense higher, or more refin’d than those of 
Brutes without our care of ’em. For were it not for that, their Houses 
wou’d be meer Bedlums, their most luxurious Treats, but a rude con- 
fusion of ill Digested, ill mixt Scents and Relishes, and the fine Furni- 
ture, they bestow so much cost on, but an expensive Heap of glitter- 
ing Rubbish. Thus they are beholding to us for the comfortable 
enjoyment of what their labour, or good Fortune hath acquir’d or 
bestow’d, and think meanly of our care only, because they under- 
stand not the value of it. 


The Essay is, in reality, hardly more than a frame for the 
“Characters.” It defends the female sex, by the method of 


EDUCATION 311 


denouncing tne “Adversaries of the Sex.” Its result as argu- 
ment is, therefore, on the whole, negative. But the positive 
value of the book is great in its spirited exemplification of a 
woman’s power to form independent judgments and to write 
vigorous English. 


In 1697, the year in which the fourth edition of Mary 
Astell’s A Serious Proposal to the Ladies ap- Daniel Defoe 
peared, Defoe published his Essay on Projects. (1661-1731) 
Among plans for joint-stock banks, repairing and widening of 
highways, assurance societies, sick clubs, pensions for widows, 
‘etc., comes “An Academy for Women”: 


I have often thought of it as one of the most barbarous customs in 
the world, considering us as a civilized and a Christian country, that 
we deny the advantages of learning to our women. We reproach the 
sex every day with folly and impertinence, while I am confident, had 
they the advantages of education equal to us, they would be guilty of 
less than ourselves. One would wonder indeed how it should happen 
that women are conversible at all, since they are only beholden to 
natural parts for all their knowledge. Their youth is spent to teach 
them to stitch and sew, or make baubles; they are taught to read, in- 
deed, and perhaps to write their names, or so, and that is the height 
of a woman’s education; and I would but ask those who slight the sex 
for their understanding, what is a man (a gentleman I mean) good 
for, that is taught no more? ... The soul is placed in the body like 
a rough diamond, and must be polished, or the lustre of it will never 
appear; and ’t is manifest that, as the rational soul distinguishes us 
from brutes, so education carries on the distinction, and makes some 
less brutish than others. This is too evident to need any demonstra- 
tion. But why, then, should women be denied the benefit of instruc- 
tion? . . . I would ask any such, what they can see in ignorance that 
they should think it a necessary ornament to a woman? Or how much 
worse is a wise woman than a fool? Or what has the woman done to 
forfeit the privilege of being taught? ... Shall we upbraid women 
with folly, when ’t is only the error of this inhuman custom that hin- 
dered them from being made wiser? 

The capacities of women are supposed to be greater, and their 
senses quicker, than those of the men; and what they might have 
been capable of being bred to, is plain from instances of female wit, 
which this age is not without; which upbraids us with injustice, and 


312 THE LEARNED LADY 


looks as if we denied women the advantage of education for fear they 
should vie with the men in their improvements. To remove this ob- 
jection, and that women might have at least a needful opportunity of 
education in all sorts of useful learning, I propose the draught of an 
academy for that purpose. . . . I doubt a method proposed by an in- 
genious lady, in a little book called Advice to the Ladies, would be 
found impracticable. ... When I talk, therefore, of an academy for 
women, I mean both the model, the teaching, and the government 
different from what is proposed by that ingenious lady for whose 
proposal I have a very great esteem, and also a great opinion of her 
wit; different, too, from all sorts of religious confinement, and, above 
all, from vows of celibacy. 

Wherefore the academy I propose should differ but little from pub- 
lic schools, wherein such ladies as were willing to study, should have 
all the advantages of learning suitable to their genius. ... 

The building should be of three plain fronts, without any jettings 
or bearing work, that the eye might at a glance see from one coin to 
the other; the gardens walled in the same triangular figure, with a 
large moat, and but one entrance.” 


Having thus provided against intrigues and escapades he 
would have no guards, no eyes, no spies, set over the ladies, 
but would expect them to be tried by the Pune of honor 
and strict virtue. 

Defoe’s arguments in favor of the higher education of 
women represent the most advanced thought of his age. 


Methinks mankind, for their own sakes, since, say what we will of 
the women, we all think fit one time or other to be concerned with 
them, should take some care to breed them up to be suitable and 
serviceable, if they expected no such thing as delight from them. 
Bless us! what care do we take to breed up a good horse, and to break 
him well! And why not a woman? .. 

But to come closer to the business. The great distinguishing differ- 
ence which is seen in the world between men and women, is in their 
education; and this is manifested by comparing it with the difference 
between one man or woman and another. 

And herein is it I take upon me to make such a bold assertion, that 
all the world are mistaken in their practice about women; for I can 
not think that God Almighty ever made them so delicate, so glorious 
creatures, and furnished them with such charms, so agreeable and de- 
lightful to man, with souls capable of the same accomplishments with 
men, and all only to be stewards of our houses, cooks, and slaves. 


EDUCATION 313 


Not that I am for exalting the female government in the least; but, 

in short, I would have men take women for companions, and educate 
them to be fit for it.... 
_ I need not enlarge on the loss the defect of education is to the sex, 
nor argue the benefit of the contrary practice: it is a thimg will be 
more easily granted than remedied. This chapter is but an essay at 
the thing; and I refer the practice to these happy days, if ever they 
shall be, when men shall be wise enough to mend it. 


Defoe asserts that his ideas on this subject were not derived 
from Mary Asitell, and is even slightly irritated that she was 
ahead of him in publication, since he had long before mentally 
elaborated the scheme he suggests. 


The feminist argument was carried on in what are known 
as the “Sophia Pamphlets.” The first of these «sonia 
appeared in 1739 and was entitled Woman not Pamphlets” 
inferior to Man: or a short and modest vindica- ‘*739"4°) 
tion of the natural right of the fair sex to a perfect equality of 
power, dignity and esteem with the men. By Sophia a person of 
Quality. There was an immediate answer under the title, Man 
superior to Woman; containing a plain confutation of the falla- 
cious arguments of Sophia in her late Treatise intitled Woman not 
Inferior to Man. In 1740 Sophia responded with, Woman’s 
superior excellence over Man or a reply to the author of a late 
treatise entitled Man superior to Woman. In which the excessive 
weakness of that Gentleman’s answer to Woman not inferior to 
Man is exposed. The three pamphlets were published together 
in 1757 under the collective title Beauty’s Triumph. These 
pamphlets give an interesting little passage at arms in the 
feminist controversy. The subjects taken up in the first 
pamphlet are closely modeled on The Woman as Good as the 
Man. “In what esteem the women are held by the men and 
how justly”’; “Whether women are inferior to men in this in- 
tellectual capacity, or not”; ““Whether the men are better 
qualified to govern than women, or not”’; “ Whether the women 
are fit for public offices, or not”; “‘Whether the women are 


314 THE LEARNED LADY 


naturally capable of teaching sciences, or not”; ‘‘ Whether 
women are naturally qualified for military offices, or not,” — 
these are the topics discussed. With regard to the education of 
women Sophia says: 


Men; by thinking us incapable of improving our intellects, have en- 
tirely thrown us out of the advantages of education, and thereby con- 
tributed as much as possible to make us the senseless creatures they 
imagine us. So that for want of education, we are rendered subject to 
all the follies they dislike in us. . . . And as our sex, when it applies to 
learning, may be said at least to keep pace with the men, so are they 
more to be esteemed for their learning than the latter: Since they are 
under a necessity of surmounting the softness they were educated in ; 
of renouncing the pleasure and indolence to which cruel custom 
seem’d to condemn them to overcome the external impediments in 
their way of study; and to conquer the disadvantageous notions, 
which the vulgar of both sexes entertain of learning in women. And 
whether it be these difficulties add any keenness to a female under- 
standing, or that nature has given women, a quicker more penetrating 
genius than to men, it is self-evident that many of our sex have far 
out-stript the men. Why then are we not as fit to learn and teach the 
sciences, at least to our own sex, as they fancy themselves to be... . 
We may easily conclude then, that if our sex, as it hitherto appears, 
have all the talents requisite to learn and teach these sciences, which 
qualify men for power and dignity, they are equally capable of apply- 
ing their knowledge to practice in exercising that power and dignity. 
And since, as we have said, this nation has seen many glorious in- 
stances of Women, severally qualified to have all public authority 
center’d in them, why may they not be as qualified at least for the 
subordinate offices of ministers of state, vice-queens, governesses, etc.? 


Sophia has, however, one reservation. Women may not 
enter the ministry: 

Thus far I insist there is no science or public office in a state which 
women are not as much qualified for by Nature as the ablest of Men. 
With regard to divinity, our natural capacity has been restrain’d by a 


positive law of God: and therefore we know better than to lay claim 
to what we could not practice without sacrilegious intrusion. 


The Gentleman, in his answer to Sophia, takes up her claims 
sertatum and disposes of them to his own satisfaction. 


Neither Juvenal nor I [he says] deny that Women may acquire some 
superficial Learning. All we contend for is that it is ever evil be- 


EDUCATION 315 


stowed upon them, inasmuch as it renders them useless to their own 
sex, and a nuisance to ours. . . . I grant Greece has shewn its Sappho, 
Rome her Cornelia, France has produced a Dacier; Holland has 
brought forth a Schurman; Italy a Doctress; and England now 
boasts an Eliza and a Sophia. 


But the whole serio-comic tone of the Gentleman’s Essay 
makes it difficult of interpretation. Sophia writes as if she 
were in genuine earnest in her protest and propaganda. But it 
seems much less certain that the Gentleman is not merely 
playing with the situation.! The identity of the writers has 
not been discovered. Miss McIlquham ? believes Lady Mary 
Wortley Montagu to be Sophia. But this is hardly likely, 
since 1739 is the year Lady Mary went to Italy. A writer sign- 
ing himself “Medley,” in Notes and Queries, suggests that 
“Sophia” was Lady Sophia Fermor, the second wife of Lord 
Cararet, and thinks she may also have been the “Sophia” of 
Letters of Portia to her Daughter Sophia, though these were not 
published till years later.® 
1 Smith, Florence: Mary Astell, p. 180. 


2 Westminster Review, vol. cuxrx, p. 444, April, 1898. 
3 Notes and Queries, 8th Series, vol. x1, p. 348. 


CHAPTER IV 


MISCELLANEOUS BOOKS ON WOMEN IN SOCIAL AND 
INTELLECTUAL LIFE 


In addition to definite discussions as to the learning ap- 
propriate for women, there were numerous books on general 
topics pertaining to women, with incidental but often most 
illuminating comments on the advantages or disadvantages of 
a liberal education. These books also aid in building up a con- 
ception of the prevailing ideas concerning women apart from 
technical questions of education. 


The Ladies’ Calling, the second edition of which appeared in 
The Ladies? 1673, was the most important as well as the 
Calling (1673, most influential of all the seventeenth-century 
aed) books on the social and domestic aspects of the 
life of women. The book is eminently well-bred, dignified, and 
aristocratic in tone, and ardently religious. The authorship of 
The Ladies’ Calling has long been in dispute. Tradition has 
persistently ascribed it to Lady Pakington who, said Lady 
Winchilsea, 


Of each Sex the two best Gifts enjoy’d, 
The Skill to write, the Modesty to hide. 


But if she were the author she has hidden the fact so success- 
fully as to lose the credit of her work. Modern investigation 
ascribes the series of books, The Whole Duty of Man, The 
Gentleman’s Calling, and The Ladies’ Calling, with some de- 
gree of certainty to Richard Allestree,! one of the learned 
and devout men who found in Lady Pakington intellectual 
as well as religious sympathy. But it seems quite probable 
that Lady Pakington assisted him in The Ladies’ Calling. At 


1 Journal of Sacred Literature (1864), pp. 433-35. Ballard gives the argu- 
ments in favor of Lady Pakington’s authorship. 


MISCELLANEOUS BOOKS ON WOMEN 317 


any rate, whoever the author, the book may fairly be con- 
sidered an expression of the ideals of the group surrounding 
Lady Pakington, an outgrowth of their discussions. The 
“Calling” described is purely religious in tone, and the re- 
publication of the book in 1673 gains an added significance 
when we think of it as a protest against the social customs of 
the Restoration court and an appeal to ladies of high rank, 
summoning them to a sober sense of their duties and re- 
sponsibilities. In an exaltation of Meekness, Modesty, Affa- 
bility, and Piety as the genuine and proper Ornaments of 
Women, the author states the opposing faults as he has ob- 
served them. The picture he gives of ladies in the best circles 
is sufficiently appalling. Under ‘“‘ Modesty” is a protest against 
“Female swearers.” “An Oath sounds gratingly out of what- 
ever mouth, but out of a woman’s it hath such an uncooth 
harshness that there is no noise this side of Hell can be more 
amazingly odious.” Drinking is also reprobated as “a vice de- 
testable in all, but prodigious in women,” “nothing human 
being so much a beast as a drunken woman.” Modesty also 
forbids excessive talkativeness, “that indecency of loquacity”’ 
generally charged to women. It forbids loudness of discourse, 
“a, blustering or ranting style,” or even “‘unhandsome earnest- 
ness.’ All mannishness in speech, manner, or dress must be 
avoided. Public speaking, even on the part of gifted women, is 
alien alike to St. Pauland true modesty. “Incontinence of mind,” 
whereby secrets slip so easily from the female grasp, is likewise 
opposed to the sobriety and self-restraint implied in modesty. 

Attractive and important as modesty is, it is outranked in 
value as a daily necessity by Meekness, meekness of the will, 
of the affections, of the understanding. Women particularly 
need this endearing quality of ready submission to authority, 
for, “since God has thus determined subjection to be the wom- 
en’s lot, there needs no other argument of its fitness, or for 
their acquiescence”’; and since they must always be under the 
control of parents or husband, they will do well to cultivate 
meekness, “the parent of peace.” 


318 THE LEARNED LADY 


Affability and compassion are considered natural to women. 
They also have a predisposition to Piety, for it is based on Fear 
and Love, the “two most pungent passions of the female sex,” 
and is, besides, their greatest ornament. Devotion, since it 
“‘requires a supple gentle soil,” finds feminine softness and 
pliability very apt and proper for it. 

The second part of The Ladies’ Calling comes from generals 
to particulars. It takes up women as Virgins, Wives, and Wid- 
ows. Modesty and obedience being the recognized virtues of 
Virgins, their case is passed over as having been already ade- 
quately presented. “Superannuated Virgins” are less easy to 
dispose of. “An old Maid is now thought such a Curse as 
no Poetic fury can exceed, look’d on as the most calamitous 
Creature in Nature.” There was no possible complete evasion 
of the contempt with which protracted maidenhood was re- 
garded. If, however, “‘ these superannuated Virgins would be- 
have themselves with Gravity and Reservedness, addict them- 
selves to the strictest Virtu and Piety, they would give the 
world some cause to believe ’t was not their necessity, but 
their choice, that kept them unmarried; that they were pre- 
engaged to a better Amour, espoused to the Spiritual Bride- 
groom: and this would give them among the soberer sort, 
at least the reverence and esteem of Matrons.... But if, on 
the other side, they endeavor to disguise their Age by all the 
impostures and gayeties of a youthful dress and behavior, if 
they still herd themselves amongst the youngest and vainest 
- company, and betray a young Mind in an aged Body, this 
must certainly expose themselves to scorn and censure.” 

Under the heading “‘Antiquated Widows” are similar ad- 
monitions to a life of “‘assiduous Devotion.” “How preposter- 
ous is it for an Old Woman to delight in Gauds and Trifles such 
as were fitter to entertain her Grand-children: to read Ro- 
mances with spectacles, and be at Masks and Dancings, when 
she is fit only to act the Antics? These are contradictions to 
Nature, the tearing off her Marks, and where she has writ fifty 
or sixty, to lessen . . . and write sixteen.” 


MISCELLANEOUS BOOKS ON WOMEN _ 319 


This is a long, serious, and very sincere book, and its evi- 
dent purpose is to take up all important questions concerning 
women. But in point of fact, decorum, morality, piety, are the 
only subjects of discussion. Education is not mentioned ex- 
cept in the Preface, where it is stated that the mental inferior- 
ity of women should not be accepted as a foregone conclusion 
until they have had the same opportunities as men. 

Men have their parts cultivated and improved by Education, re- 
fined and subtilized by Learning and Arts, are like an inclosed piece 
of a Common, which by industry and husbandry becomes a, different 
thing from the rest, tho the natural turf owned no such inequality. 
And truly had women the same advantage, I dare not say but that 
they would make as good returns of it; som of those few that have bin 
tried, have bin eminent in several parts of Learning. . . . And were we 
sure they would have balast to their sails, have humility enough to 
poize themselves against the vanity of Learning, I see not why they 
might not more frequently be entrusted with it; for if they could be 
secured against this weed, doubtless the soil is rich enough to bear a 
good crop. But not to oppose a received opinion, let it be admitted, 
that in respect of their intellects they are below men; yet sure in the 
sublimest part of humanity, they are their equals; they have souls of 
as divine an Original, as endless a Duration, and as capable of infinite 
Beatitude. 


Aside from this one passage the book is thoroughly conven- 
tional in its conception of the domestic, educational, and social 
duties and position of women. There is no hint of revolt, no 
thought of enlarged advantages. Whatever is, is right, so 
far as the position of women is concerned. The one appeal is 
for high-mindedness, personal religion, close adherence to the 
Church, as a woman’s armor of defense. Within the realm of 
the spirit God and her own nature have set her free for lofty 
flights and great attainments. 


One of the most popular and entertaining of the many books 
for the particular advantage of the female SEX The Lady's 
was The Lady’s New Year's Gift: or, Advice to a New Year's 
Daughter, by George Savile, first Marquess of Gish PES) 
Halifax. It was printed from a circulating manuscript without 


320 THE LEARNED LADY 


authorization in 1688. The fifteenth edition appeared in 1765. 
There was a new edition in 1791. It was translated into Italian 
and several times into French.! There is no word about educa- 
tion in the book. It concerns itself entirely with moral, social, 
and domestic topics. Vanity, Pride, Censure, Religion, are 
characteristic headings. Under “Behaviour” is a satiric de- 
scription of the women who refuse to grow old. 


I will add one Advice to conclude this head, which is that you will 
let every seven years make some alteration in you towards the Graver 
side, and not be like the Girls of Fifty, who resolve to be always 
Young, whatever Time with his Iron Teeth hath determined to the 
contrary. Unnatural things carry a Deformity in them never to be 
Disguised; the Liveliness of youth in a riper Age, looketh like a new 
patch upon an old Gown; so that a Gay Matron, a cheerful old Fool, 
may be reasonably put into the List of the Tamer kind of Monsters. 
There is a certain Creature call’d a Grave Hobby Horse, a kind of a 
she Numps, that pretendeth to be pulled to a play, and must needs go 
to Bartholomew Fair, to look after the young Folks, whom she only 
seemeth to make her care, in reality she taketh them for her excuse. 
Such an old Butterfly is of all Creatures the most ridiculous, and the 
soonest found out. 


This passage is apparently reminiscent of The Ladies’ Calling 
and but emphasizes the early relegation of the lady to the cap 
and the chimney-corner. There are other similar social dicta 
but the stress of the advice is on Husbands, House, Family, 
Children, the Husband bulking so large in the foreground as 
almost to obscure other interests. ‘How to live with a hus- 
band” is the central topic. The general laws on which particu- 
lar maxims are founded are thus stated: 

You must first lay it down for a Foundation in general, That there 
is Inequality in the Sexes, and that for the better Oeconomy of the 
World, the Men, who were to be the Lawgivers, had the larger share of 
Reason bestow’d upon them; by which means your Sex is the better 
prepar’d for the Compliance that is necessary for the better perform- 
ance of those Duties which seem to be most properly assign’d to it. This 
looks a little uncourtly at the first appearance; but upon Examina- 
tion it will be found that Nature is so far from being unjust to you, 


1 See Complete Works of George Savile, First Marquess of Halifax. — 


MISCELLANEOUS BOOKS ON WOMEN — 3221 


that she is partial on your side. She hath made you such large 
Amends by other Advantages, for the seeming Injustice of the first 
Distribution, that the Right of Complaining is come over to our Sex. 
You have it in your power not only to free yourselves, but to subdue 
your Masters, and without violence throw both their Natural and 
Legal Authority at your Feet. We are made of differing Tempers, that 
our Defects may the better be Mutually Supplied: Your Sex wanteth 
our Reason for your Conduct, and our Strength for your Protection; 
Ours wanteth your Gentleness to soften, and to entertain us. The first 
part of our Life is a good deal subjected to you in the Nursery, where 
you Reign without Competition, and by that means have the advan- 
tage of giving the first Impressions. Afterwards you have stronger 
Influences, which, well manag’d, have more force in your behalf, than 
all our Privileges and Jurisdictions can pretend to have against you. 
You have more strength in your Looks, than we in our Laws, and more 
power by your Tears, than we have by our Arguments. 


The difficulties a wife may meet are fully recognized and the 
best ways of surmounting them are suggested. Is her husband 
unfaithful? The wife’s proper task is Discretion, Silence, af- 
fected Ignorance. Does he drink to excess? Let her reflect 
that the fault is too common to be fatal to happiness. Is he ill- 
humored? The wife has but to mark “how the Wheels of such 
a Man’s Head are used to move” and she can manage him at 
her will. Is he sullen? Watch for “the first Appearances of 
Cloudy Weather and be wary till the Fit shall pass.” Possibly 
he may be a “Close-handed Wretch.” This calls forth all a 
Wife’s powers. She must use kindness, play on his ambition 
and vanity, using now and then even “a Dose of Wine to open 
up a narrow Mind.” A weak and incompetent husband may 
become, in the hands of “‘a dexterous woman,” even an asset 
of some value. She must, of course, pay deference to him in 
public, but she can easily see to it that he is really under her 
control. “Such a Fool is a dangerous Beast, if others have the 
keeping of him; and you must be very undexterous if when 
your Husband shall resolve to be an Ass, you do not take care 
he may be your Ass.” Marriage is but a prolonged fencing- 
bout of wits. The woman works under unavoidable handicaps, 
but if she is sufficiently adroit, if she is mistress of artifice, if 


322 THE LEARNED LADY 


she knows the tricks of the game, she may emerge from the 
conflict substantially victorious. 

The book was written in all seriousness and with tender love 
for the daughter Elizabeth for whose guidance it was intended. 
She is said to have prized it highly and to have kept it always 
on her table. Elizabeth was married early to the third Earl of 
Chesterfield who evidently had a humorous appreciation of 
the book, for he wrote on the fly-leaf ‘Labour in vain.” 


In 1691 there appeared A Dialogue concerning Women, Be- 
A Dialogue con- %9 & Defence of the Sex. Written to Eugenia by 
cerning Women W. Walsh. The Preface by John Dryden says of 
Gey) women: “For my own part, who have always 
been their Servant, and have never drawn my Pen against 
them, I had rather see some of them prais’d extraordinarily, 
than any of them suffer by detraction: And that in this Age, 
and at this time particularly, wherein I find more Heroines 
than Heroes.” 

The dialogue is between Misogynes and Philogynes: Miso- 
gynes brings up Solomon, Euripides, Simonides, Lucian, St. 
Chrysostom, and Juvenal, the Epigrammatists, Comick Poets, 
and Satyrists, as a dreadful array of the ancients against 
women, showing at least that these ancients “had a very com- 
mendable faculty of calling Names.” Misogynes especially 
dislikes ‘“‘the Learned Woman, who runs mad for the love of 
hard words, who talks a mixt Jargon, or Lingua Franca, and 
has spent a great deal of time to make her capable of talking 
Nonsense in four or five different languages.” 4 


Do you not think Learning and Politics become a Woman as ill as 
riding astride? [he asks]. Do you not, in answer to these, fetch me a 
Sappho out of Greece; a Cornelia, the Mother of the Gracchi, out of 
Rome; an Anna Maria Schurman out of Holland; and think that in 
shewing me three Learned Women in three thousand years, you have 
gain’d your point? 


1 Walsh, William: A Dialogue concerning Women, p. 31. 


MISCELLANEOUS BOOKS ON WOMEN = 328 


Philogynes answers that he shall continue in his opinion that 
learning is suitable for women 
* till you have answer’d Anna Maria Shurman’s Arguments in their 
behalf, and ’till you have taken away her self, who is one of the best 
Arguments.! °T is possible everybody does not know, that she was 
very well skill’d in the Hebrew, Chaldee, Syriac, Arabick, Turkish, 
Greek, Latin, French, English, Italian, Spanish, German, Dutch, and 
Flemish Languages; that she had a very good faculty at Poetry and 
Painting, that she was a perfect Mistress of all the Philosophies, that 
the greatest Divines of her time were proud of her judgment in their 
own profession, and that when we had this character of her she was 
not above Thirty years of Age.? 

Or shall I refer you to Mademoiselle Gournay among the French, or 
Lucretia Marinella among the Italians, who have both writ in defence 
of their Sex, and who are both Arguments themselves of the Excel- 
lency of it? 3 

Consider what Time and Charge is spent to make Men fit for some- 
what; Eight or Nine Years at School; Six or Seven Years at the Uni- 
versity; Four or Five Years in Travel; and after all this, are they not 
almost all Fops, Clowns, Dunces, or Pedants? I know not what you 
think of the Women; but if they are Fools they are Fools with less 
pains, and less expence than we are.4 


Charles L. Gildon published in 1694 a volume of miscellane- 
ous letters and essays. Two of these letters were Gitdon’s Let- 
entitled “Chloe to Urania, against Womens ‘5 (1694) 
being Learn’d,” and “An Answer to the foregoing Letter in 
Defence of Womens being Learn’d.” Chloe but transmits the 
arguments of her lover Lysander. “Learning will add fresh 
Pride to the Sex,” he asserts, and will kindle in them an ambi- 
tion of absolute Mastery. His second objection is the fun- 
damental one. “‘Women were by their Creator design’d for 
OBEDIENCE not RvtgE; to be instructed by their Husbands, not 
to instruct them; and to Study nothing but their Household 
Affairs.” If learning were added to the personal charms of 
women, not deity itself, Lysander thinks, could maintain the 
divinely ordained overlordship of man. A final argument is 


1 Walsh, William: A Dialogue concerning Women, p. 86. 
2 Ibid., p. 92. 3 Ibid., p. 93. 4 Ibid., p. 101. 


324 THE LEARNED LADY 


that learning will tend to make women unfaithful to their hus- 
bands, will give them “wandering desires.” Lysander’s anti- 
dote for the new ideas that seem to be perverting women’s 
minds is Halifax’s Advice to a Daughter, the authority of which 
was so well established that Chloe dares utter no protest 
against it. Urania, however, easily demolishes Lysander’s ob- 
jections, asserting that learning makes women humble, that no 
wise woman would ever think so wildly as to “attempt the in- 
verting so prevalent, and inveterate a Custom of the Sover- 
eignty of the Men.” The Advice to a Daughter is a book Urania 
has little esteem for. Especially is she indignant at Halifax’s 
advice to women to remain in the religious faith in which they 
have been brought up, since, even if such faith be error, says 
Halifax, women are not expected to do the voluminous reading 
necessary to find out the truth. Women, Urania maintains, 
should not govern their actions merely by what a corrupt age 
‘expects.’ They have souls to save and must learn the truth 
and must have the learning that will guide them to the 
truth. 

Both Lysander and Urania make the curious assumption 
that learning would render women more attractive. Lysander 
thinks it would add unduly to their power. Urania explains 
the tendency of the learned woman to conjugal infidelity by 
the statement that her uncommon learning results in an un- 
common number of admirers. Let more ladies have learning 
and the charm of novelty would vanish. 

Urania is so easily superior to Chloe and her lover that we 
must recognize in Gildon one of the champions of female learn- 
ing. 


One of the most curious books of the late seventeenth cen- 
The Ladies? tury is The Ladies’ Dictionary; Being a General 
Dictionary (1694) Entertainment for the Fair-Sex: A Work Never 
attempted in English. It was printed for “John Dunton at the 
Raven in the Poultry, 1694,” and is signed by “N.H.” who 
lays claim to the authorship in the following passage which 


MISCELLANEOUS BOOKS ON WOMEN 325 


may be quoted at length, since from it we also get a characteri- 
zation of the book, its proposed scope and aim: 


It is now near a Twelve-month since I first entered upon this Project, at 
the desire of a worthy Friend, unto whom I owe more than I can do for 
him: And when I considered the great need of such a Book, as might be a 
Compneat Dimectory fo the Female Sex in all Relations, Companies, 
Conditions and States of Lefe; even from Cu1LpHOoop down to Old-age, 
and from the Lady at the Court, to the Cook-maid in the Country: I was 
at length prevailed wpon to do tt, and the rather because I know not of any 
Book that hath done the like; indeed many learned Writters there be, who 
have wrote excellent well of some Particular Subjects herein Treated of, 
but as there is not one of them hath written upon all of them, so there are 
some things Treated of in this Dictionary that I have not met with in any 
Language. ’T is true, MY OWN EXPERIENCE IN LOVE AFFaIRS, might 
have furnisht owt Materials for such a Work; yet I do not pretend 
thereby to lessen my Obligations, to those Ladies, who by their Generous 
imparting to me their Manuscripts, have furnisht me with several hun- 
dred Experiments and Secrets in DOMESTIC AFFAIRS, BEAUTIFYING, 
PRESERVING, CANDYING, PHYSICK, CHIRURGERY, ETc. Proper for my 
Work, and such as were not taken out of Printed Books, or on the Credit 
of others, but such as are Re-commended to me from their own Practice, all 
which shall be inserted in a Second Part, if this First meets with En- 
couragement, that so both together may contain all ACCOMPLISHMENTS 
needful for Ladies, and be thereby rendered perfect. ... So that you'll 
find here at one view, the whole Series and Order of all the most Heroick 
and Illustrious Women of all times, from the first dawning of the World to 
this present Age, of all Regions and Climate, from the Spicy East, to the 
Golden West, of all faiths, whether Jews, Ethnicks, or Christians, (and 
particularly an Account of those WommN Martyrs that suffer’d in 
Queen Mary’s days: And in the West in 85: And of all Eminent Ladies, 
that have dy’d in England for these last fifty years) of all Arts and Sci- 
ences, both the graver, and more polite; of all Estates, VIRGINS, WIVES 
and Winows; of all Complexions and Humours, the Fair, the Foul, the 
Grave, the Witty, the Reserv’d, the Familiar, the Chast, the Wanton. 
Whatever Poets have fancied, or credible Histories have Recorded, of the 
first you have the Misteries and Allegories clearly interpreted and ex- 
plained; of the latter the Genuine Relations Impartially delivered. 


The general arrangement of the book is alphabetical, but 
Mr. “N. H.” is too temperamental to yield entirely to an arbi- 
trary alphabet, and so, if words are spiritually akin, he does 
not hesitate to group them in defiance of their initial letters, 


326 THE LEARNED LADY 


as when he puts “Pimp” under “Bawd,” being unwilling to 
separate the household of Satan. There is, also, to add to the 
confusion, unnatural division of subjects. Under “D,” “Di- 
versions for Ladies” begins, but it is continued under “R” as 
“Recreations for Ladies.”” More than one third of the 522 
pages of the book is given to such topics as “Beauty,” “How 
to preserve Beauty,” “Gracefulness,” “Behaviour,” ‘‘Man- 
ners,” “Love,” “Melancholy Lovers,” “Occasions of falling 
in Love,” “Passionate Lovers,” “Opinions of the Learned on 
Love,” “Progress of Love,” “Kissing,” “Wooing,” “Court- 
ship,” and “Wedding.” 

Mr. “N. H.” says he has consulted the most ‘ateatt books 
written for and against the “Fair-Sex” and has made free use 
of “Dr. Blancards, Mr. Blounts, and other Dictionaries.” 
That he had read The Ladies Calling and Advice to a Daughter 
is apparent from his treatment of such topics as, “HusBaNnD 
INDIFFERENT, or, how to make your Life easie with him,” and 
‘VIRGINS, THEIR STATE AND BEHAVIOUR, particularly those in 
years,” where the outline of the thought and, in frequent in- 
stances, the exact phrasing of these recognized authorities are 
preserved. 

“Religion, a lady’s chief ornament,” is disposed of in two 
pages. Learning takes about four pages. The promise of the 
author to give a catalogue of heroic and illustrious women is 
fulfilled by hundreds of names from myth and legend, from 
Roman, Greek, and Hebrew history, and from Italy and Hol- 
land. When he begins his search for the eminent ladies in Eng- 
land during the last half-century he summons quite a list, in- 
cluding the Countess of Pembroke, Lady Mary Wroth, Ann 
Askew, the daughters of Sir Anthony Cook, Lady Elizabeth 
Carew, Elizabetha Joanna Westonia, Lady Jane Grey, the 
Duchess of Newcastle, Mrs. Katherine Philips, Anne Broad- 
street, and “‘Astera Behen,” but a page and a half is all he can 
find to say of all of them together. Mrs. Behn he describes as 
“a Dramatic Poetress, whose well-known Plays have been very 
taking; she was a retained Poetress to one of the Theatresses, 


MISCELLANEOUS BOOKS ON WOMEN 327 


and writ, besides, many curious Poems.”’ The Duchess of New- 
castle is ““a very Charitable and obliging Lady to the World” 
in that she “copiously imparted to publick View, her Elaborate 
Works ... not forgetting to make her own and her Lord’s 
Fame live, when Monuments shall crumble into Dust.” 

Taken as a whole, the book is a defense and eulogy of ladies 
and in the very brief portion of it dedicated to learned women 
it champions their ability and protests against undue limita- 
tions of their activities. 


Among the early efforts to meet the tastes of women and at 
the same time coax them along the paths of The Ladies’ 
a more definite mentality, we must rank The Diary (1703-1726) 
Ladies’ Diary: or, The Woman’s Almanack, Containing many 
Delightful and Entertaining Particulars, peculiarly adapted for 
the Use and Diversion of the Fair-Sex. One series of these little 
books ranges continuously from 1703 to 1726. The Diaries 
were brought out anonymously, but Mr. Thoresby records in 
1720 that he was visited by “Mr. Beighton of Coventry, an 
ingenious gentleman, author of the Ladies’ Diary,” so the au- 
thorship seems to have been known though not printed. The 
announced purpose of the Diaries is “to promote some Parts 
of Mathematical Learning amongst the Fair Sex.” To this end 
Enigmas, Paradoxes, and Arithmetical Questions, are proposed 
one year, and prizes given for the answers the next year. The 
Paradoxes included forty-five taken from a curious textbook 
entitled Gorden’s Geography. The Enigmas were usually stated 
and answered in verse, and sometimes they were in French or 
Latin. The arithmetical questions often involved in answer a 
page or two of algebraic formule or even the processes of geom- 


1 “Mr. Graves said that Mr. Beaton’s Map of Warwickshire will now come 
out in a little time. He commends it mightily as a most accurate Thing. This 
Beaton writes The Lady’s Diary, an Almanack, that comes out every Year. 
This Beaton hath a Mathematical Head. It seems he condemns all the Mapps 
that ever were done of all or any Parts of England, as full of Faults. I guess 
him ae hence to be a conceited vain Man.” (Hearne’s Collections, vol. rx, 
p- 106. 


328 THE LEARNED LADY 


etry or trigonometry. As a rule the ladies were especially in- 
terested in the Enigmas, leaving the mathematical portions to 
the men of letters, clergymen, and schoolmasters who solaced 
their winter evenings with the stimuli offered by the Woman’s 
Almanack. Yet the editor asserts that even in mathematics 
the ladies often proved themselves very skillful. In the intro- 
duction in 1718 he says: 


And, that the rest of the Fair Sex may be encourag’d to attempt 
Mathematics and Philosophical Knowledge, they here see that their 
Sex have as clear Judgements, a sprightly quick Wit, a penetrating 
Genius, and as discerning and sagacious Faculties as ours, and to my 
Knowledge do, and can, carry them thro’ the most difficult Problems. 
I have seen them solve, and am fully convine’d, their Works in the 
Ladies Diary are their own Solutions and Compositions. This we 
may glory in as the Amazons of our Nation; and Foreigners would be 
amaz’d when I shew them no less than 4 or 5 Hundred several Letters 
from so many several Women, with Solutions Geometrical, Arithemeti- 
cal, Algebraical, Astronomical and Philosophical. 


The solemnity with which contributors devoted themselves 
to the Diaries, the stately compliments interchanged over suc- 
cessful work, provoke a smile, but yet it must be confessed that 
no other agency between 1703 and 1726 offered to women so 
genuine an intellectual opportunity. To some women it was 
literally a perennial joy. Who were the Astrea and the Adras- 
tea whose names are so often in the prize list? Who, in particu- 
lar, was Anna Philomathes, who could write up whole numbers, 
questions and answers, and who kept at the business steadily 
for eleven years? From what homes did the “4 or 5 Hundred 
several Letters” of the editor’s note come? That the Tailers, 
the Spectators, and the Guardians should have their thousands 
of readers is easily explicable. But do not the now obscure 
Diaries indicate a more unusual mental energy, a more genuine 
delight in personal mental activity? In many a home, geogra- 
phies, arithmeties, histories, classical dictionaries, would sur- 
round the “Fair-Sex” as they devoted themselves with leis- 
urely assiduity to the demands of the Diary for the ensuing 


MISCELLANEOUS BOOKS ON WOMEN 329 


year. And a prize or an honorable mention marked a gratify- 
ing mental achievement. 


In The Guardian, No. 155, we have an account of how melan- 
choly a thing it is to see a coxcomb at the head The Guardian 
of a family. The paper proceeds: (2713) 


This is one reason why I would the more recommend the improve- 
ments of the mind to my female readers, that a family may have a 
double chance for it; and if it meets with weakness in one of the heads, 
may have it made up in the other. It is indeed an unhappy circum- 
stance in a family, where the wife has more knowledge than the hus- 
band; but it is better it should be so, than that there should be no 
knowledge in the whole house. It is highly expedient that at least one 
of the persons, who sits at the helm of affairs, should give an example 
of good sense to those who are under them. 

I have often wondered that learning is not thought a proper in- 
gredient in the education of a woman of quality or fortune. Since 
they have the same improveable minds as the male part of the species, 
why should they not be cultivated by the same method? Why should 
reason be left to itself in one of the sexes, and be disciplined with so 
much care in the other? 

There are some reasons why learning seems more adapted to the 
female world, than to the male. As in the first place, because they have 
more spare time upon their hands, and lead a more sedentary life. 
Their employments are of a domestic nature, and not like those of the 
other sex, which are often inconsistent with study and contemplation. 
The excellent lady, the lady Lizard, in the space of one summer fur- 
nished a gallery with chairs and couches of her own and her daughters’ 
working; and at the same time heard all doctor Tillotson’s sermons 
twice over. It is always the custom for one of the young ladies to 
read, while the others are at work; so that the learning of the family 
is not at all prejudicial to its manufactures. I was mightily pleased 
the other day to find them all busy in preserving several fruits of the 
season, with the Sparkler in the midst of them, reading over the Plu- 
rality of Worlds. It was very entertaining to me to see them divid- 
ing their speculations between jellies and stars, and making a sudden 
transition from the sun to an apricot, or from the Corpernican system 
to the figure of a cheesecake. 

There is another reason why those especially who are women of 
quality, should apply themselves to letters, namely, because their 
husbands are generally strangers to them. 

It is a great pity there should be no knowledge in a family. For my 


330 THE LEARNED LADY 


own part, I am concerned, when I go into a great house, when perhaps 
there is not a single person that can spell, unless it be by chance the 
butler, or one of the footmen. What a figure is their young heir likely 
to make, who is a dunce both by father’s and mother’s side! 1 


Addison and Steele had in mind some publication such as 
The Ladies’ The Ladies’ Library at least three years before 
Library (1714) it appeared. On April 12, 1711 (No. 37), Addi- 
son described in The Spectator the library of a lady called Leo- 
nora.? She had assembled her books partly in accordance with 
her own taste, partly on the principle that there were some 
books no library could do without. The list is an interest- 
ing one: 

Ogleby’s Virgil. 

Dryden’s Juvenal. 

Casandra. 

Astrea. 

Sir Isaac Newton’s Works. 

The Grand Cyrus: with a Pin stuck in one of the middle Leaves. 

Pembroke’s Arcadia. 

Lock of Human Understanding: with a Paper of Patches in it. 

A Spelling book. 

A Dictionary for the Explanation of hard Words, 

Sherlock upon Death. 

The fifteen Comforts of Matrimony. 

Sir William Temple’s Essays. 

Father Malebranche’s Search:after Truth, translated into English. 

A Book of Novelles. 

The Academy of Compliments. 

Culpepper’s Midwifery. 

The Ladies’ Calling. 

Tales in Verse by Mr. Durfey: Bound in Red Leather, gilt on the 

Back, and doubled down in several Places. 

All the Classick Authors in Wood. 

A Set of Elzivers by the same Hand. 

Clelia: Which opened of itself in the Place that described two Lov- 


ers in a Bower. 


1 The Guardian, Sept. 18 and 19, 1713. 

2 “Teonora has been identified as Mrs. Perry, sister of Miss Shepheard, the 
‘Parthenia’ of No. 140 and ‘Leonora’ of No. 113. Both were kinswomen of 
Sir Fleetwood Shepheard.” (The Spectator, vol. 11, p. 326.) . 


MISCELLANEOUS BOOKS ON WOMEN _ 331 


Baker’s Chronicle. 
Advice to a Daughter. 
The New Atalantis, with a Key to it. 
_ Mr. Steele’s Christian Heroe. 
A Prayer Book: With a Battle of Hungary Water by the side of it. 
Dr. Sacheverell’s Speech. 
Fielding’s Tryal. 
Seneca’s Morals. 
Taylor’s Holy Living and Dying. 
Le Ferte’s Instructions for Country Dances. 


After some comment on this list as not in all respects desirable, 
Addison stated that it was his purpose soon to suggest a cata- 
logue of books that would be proper for the improvement of 
the sex. In May (No. 79) of the same year a lady named 
“B.D.” reminded The Spectator of this promise, and urged that 
in his catalogue of a Female Library he would pay particular 
attention to devotional works. In June (No. 92) The Spectator 
gives an account of the letters received by the editor in answer 
to his call for help in making up his “Catalogue of a Lady’s 
Library.” Book-sellers recommend the authors they have 
printed; husbands give the preference to Wingate’s Arithmetic, 
the Countess of Kent’s Receipts, The Government of the Tongue. 
Ladies send in all sorts of advice. “‘Coquetilla begs me not to 
think of nailing Women upon their Knees with Manuals of 
Devotion, nor of scorching their Faces with Books of House- 
wifry.” French romances and plays rank among the most 
popular sorts of reading. The Spectator renews his promise to 
search out in authors ancient and modern the passages most 
suitable for women, a work of this nature being the more neces- 
sary since most books are calculated for male readers. 

In August (No. 140) “Parthenia”’ writes concerning her dis- 
appointment on reading the description of Leonora’s Library 
which she finds no true guide at all, and she urges The Spectator 
to more earnest efforts in behalf of the sex: 


_ The great desire I have to Embellish my Mind with some of those 
Graces which you say are so becoming, and which you assert Reading 
helps us to, has made me uneasie’till I am put in a capacity of attain- 


332 THE LEARNED LADY 


ing them: This, Sir, I shall never think my self in, ’till you shall be 
pleased to recommend some Author or Authors to my Perusal. ...I 
write to you not only my own Sentiments, but also those of several 
other of my Acquaintance, who are as little pleased with the ordinary 
manner of spending one’s Time as myself: And if a fervent Desire 
after Knowledge, and a great Sense of our present Ignorance, may be 
thought a good presage and earnest of Improvement you may look 
upon your Time you shall bestow in answering this Request not 
thrown away to no purpose. 


In spite cf all this preliminary discussion the scheme was not 
immediately carried out. In November, 1712 (No. 528), “Ra- 
chel Welladay” wrote reproachfully: ““You never have given 
us the Catalogue of a Lady’s Library as you promised.” And 
it was not till 1714 that The Ladies’ Library was published by 
Steele. Though in three volumes and quite expensive, it be- 
came at once so popular that there was an eighth edition by 
1772.1 The book was said to be “ Written by a Lady,” but it is 
in reality a compilation from seventeenth-century authors. In 
the Atheneum (July 5, 1884) is an article by Mr. Aitkin in 
which the chief passages are traced to Taylor’s Holy Living 
(168 pages), Fleetwood’s Relative Duties of Parents and Chil- 
dren, The Whole Duty of Man, The Government of the Tongue, 
The Ladies’ Calling (208 pages), Locke’s Treatise on Education, 
Lucas’s Practical Christianity and Enquiry after Happiness, 
Scott’s Christian Life, Tillotson’s Sermons, Mary Astell’s Seri- 
ous Proposal (86 pages), Halifax’s Advice to a Daughter (47 
pages), Hickes’s Education of a Daughter. Angry charges were 
brought against Steele for his use of such copious extracts from 
Jeremy Taylor, as “‘an infringement on the rights of the poor 
orphans who have very little else to subsist on,”? and Mary 
Astell commented satirically on the consistency of the author 
who had shown his teeth against her Serious Proposal and then 
had transcribed “‘above a hundred pages of it”’ into his Ladies’ 
Library. But no individual cavils interfered with the general 
approval. The book was received as an extremely judicious 


1 Aitkin, George: The Life of Richard Steele, vol. u, p. 897. 
2 Ihid., vol. u, p. 39. 


MISCELLANEOUS BOOKS ON WOMEN _ 333 


compilation of the best passages from authoritative sources. 
The Ladies’ Calling, Advice to a Daughter, A Serious Proposal, 
and The Education of a Daughter, however unacceptable to 
modern thought many of their fundamental assumptions and 
practical rules may be, represented the highest and most digni- 
fied contemporary views as to the rights and responsibilities 
of women. Brought together thus in one survey these ideas 
would make a cumulative impression. There was nothing in 
the quotations to antagonize or terrify the most conservative 
religious readers, yet the total effect of the book would be a 
recognition of woman’s ability to think on important and diffi- 
cult questions, and the outcome would be to give her insensibly 
a more honorable place in home, social, and church life. 


In the Supplement to The Gentleman Instructed there is an 
animated presentation of the faults of women. +. Gentleman 
Eusebius, the sage who is to instruct Neander Instructed (8th 
in the duties of a gentleman, becomes so caus- ° 178) 
tic in his attacks on women that Emilia presents the matter to 
a “Juncto” of ladies assembled to discuss the fashions. Emilia 
and Lucia are appointed to wait on Eusebius and explain to 
him that a “Select Committee of Ladies” require satisfaction 
at his hands. Neander proceeds in lively fashion to lay open 
the faults of ladies, their idleness, frivolity, vanity, and igno- 
rance. During an arraignment so detailed and knowing it is 
small wonder that the envoys “sate upon the Tenters,” and re- 
ceived the witty summary of their sins with floods of tears, or 
with torrents of angry words. On the entrance of Neander the 
colloquy takes a milder tone and Eusebius shows that he has 
“Balms to heal, as well as Causticks to blister.” By a pane- 
gyric of noble and virtuous women he “dashes the aigre with 
the doux,” and shows that he can speak “like a Gentleman as 
well as an Orator.”’ He further modifies his harsh attitude by 
attributing feminine faults to defects in education. In answer 
to Neander’s question as to the “Cause of our Ladies’ Misfor- 
tune,” Eusebius responds: 


334 THE LEARNED LADY 


It’s indeed a Misfortune, but almost Universal; it’s spread over the 
whole World, and affects the whole Species. Emilia has touched the 
Cause, ill Education: This is the fatal Source of their Misery, the true 
Origin of all their Failings. Young Ladies are brought up as if God 
created em merely for Seraglio, and that their only Business was to 
charm a brutish Suléan: One would think they had no Souls, there is 
such a Care taken of their Bodies; that God had enacted a Salique 
Law as well as the French, and excluded the Sex from the Inheritance 
of Heaven.! 


Later Eusebius has so far conquered the opposition of the 
two ladies as to venture upon specific good advice: 


Pretend not in Company to Wit; you will certainly betray your 
Judgment. Women seldom appear more foolish, than when they 
aspire to the Glory of being thought wise. Good God! How was I 
plague’d t’other Day with the Impertinence of Madam H. She com- 
mented upon Aristotle, and Lectur’d us upon the Summe of Thomas 
Aquinas. She scorn’d the Female Topick of Modes and Dresses, and 
was for dancing on the high Ropes of Physicks and Divinity. We were 
first regaled with Materia Prima ; then came up a Dish of Occult Qual- 
ities ; and at last a whole Plate of Theological Terms were flung among 
the Company. It was as impossible to stop her in this learned Career, 
as a Ship under full Sail, and you might have sooner silene’d a Hurri- 
cane, than have fetter’d her Ladyship’s Tongue. The Sex admir’d her 
Wisdom, and the Men smil’d at her Folly. She is [sic] made a Provi- 
sion of School Jargon, and laid it out with much Prodigality, and 
more Assurance. But all her Knowledge stuck on the Superficies of 
Words, she enter’d not into the Sense. So that the Fame of her Parts 
shrunk under Experience, and this Phoenix of women prov’d only a 
well-taught Parrot.” 


To a eulogy of needlework he adds: 


You may season Works with Reading, for though Women should 
not pretend to commence Doctors, yet I would not have ’em forswear 
Knowledge, nor make a Vow of Stupidity. Indeed it’s not necessary 
to Rival the Knowledge of the Sybils, nor the Science of the Muses, 
she should not wade too deep into Controversy, nor soar so high as 


1 The Gentleman Instructed in the Conduct of a Virtuous and Happy Life. In 
Three Parts. Written for the Instruction of a Young Nobleman. To which is 
added, A Word to the Ladies, by way of Supplement to the First Part. (William 
Darrell.) Eighth edition. London, 1723, p. 127. 

2 Ibid., p. 155. 


MISCELLANEOUS BOOKS ON WOMEN 335 


Divinity. These Studies lie out of a Lady’s Way: They fly up to the 
Head, and not only intoxicate weak Brains, but turn them; They en- 
gender Pride, and blow us up with Self-conceitedness, and when all 
these meet, we shall be apt to measure Faith by our private Judg- 
ment, and set up our ill-shap’d Notions against the receiv’d Tenets of 
our Religion.! 


Eusebius joins with nearly all contemporary moralists in a 
condemnation of romances: 


Let not Romances come within reach of a young Lady: They are 
the Poison of Youth and murther Souls, as sure as Arsenick or Rats- 
bane kills Bodies. . . . Alas, when a young Creature reads over flour- 
ish’d Descriptions of conquering Beauties, and captive Knights; what 
a fine Landskip will they draw in her Head? How powerfully will 
they work upon her tender Heart? What a Tumult will they raise in 
her Breast? .. . How often will they envy a Philoclea for having a 
Pyrocles at her Feet, and how seriously will she wish herself in the 
Place of Pamelia. Nay, it’s odd, when the Fancy is warm’d, and the 
Imagination charm’d with the advantageous Characters of those 
Platonick Knights, she may fall in Love with the bare Product of 
Sidney’s Brain, and become a real Slave to Fable and Fiction.? 


So convincing was Eusebius that Emilia said on leaving: 


To complete the Favour, be pleas’d to oblige me with your Instruc- 
tion in Writing. Memory is Treacherous, and we often forget those 
Things that should always be remembered: Besides the Benefit is too 
important to be confined to a private Person. My Disease is Epidemi- 
eal, and you will find few Ladies in Court untainted: Pray let the 
Remedy be publick. I will send it to the Press with your Leave, and 
present it to our Sex with a Dedication. 


Then the ladies took: leave of Eusebius and drove home. 
“They were as calm as a spring Morning, and of Enemies be- 
came Eusebius’s Admirers.” * 

In the Supplemant to The Gentleman Instructed there is little 
that is constructive so far as education is concerned. The faults 
of women are wittily and picturesquely phrased, but no substi- 

1 The Gentleman Instructed in the Conduct of a Virtuous and Happy Life. In 
Three Parts. Written for the Instruction of a Young Nobleman. To which is 
added, A Word to the Ladies, by way of Supplement to the First Part. (William 


Darrell.) Eighth edition. London, 1723, p. 151. 
2 Ibid., p. 165. 3 Ibid., p. 173. 


336 THE LEARNED LADY 


tute scheme of life is offered. Wherever learning is specifically 
spoken of it is with derision. 


Lord Lyttleton wrote in 1731, when he was but twenty-two, 
Advice to'a a poem entitled “Advice to a Lady” in which 
Lady (1731) he reiterated the commonplaces of the day. He 
counsels an “elegance of mind as well as dress,”’ but strictly 
limits the exercise of such mentality as the lady may possess: 

Nor make to dangerous wit a vain pretence, 
But wisely rest content with modest sense; 
For wit, like wine, intoxicates the brain, 
Too strong for feeble woman to sustain: 
Of those who claim it more than half have none; 
And half of those who have it are undone. 
Seek to be good but aim not to be great: 
A woman’s noblest station is retreat: 
Her fairest virtues fly from public sight, 
Domestic worth, that shuns too strong a light. 


The attitude of the prudent wife towards her husband is also 
indicated: 

From kind concern about his weal or woe, 

Let each domestic duty seem to flow, 

The household sceptre if he bids you bear, 

Make it your pride his servant to appear; 

Endearing thus the common acts of life, 

The mistress still shall charm him in the wife. 


Dr. Johnson thought this poem showed a mind attentive to 
life, that it was vigorously and very elegantly expressed, and 
that it was marked by much truth and much prudence. But 
Lady Mary Wortley Montagu summarized Lord Lyttleton’s 
platitude in a contemptuous couplet: 

Be plain in dress, and sober in your diet; 
In short, my deary, kiss me! and be quiet. 

In 1744 Edward Moore published his Fables for Ladies.! In 

thirteen rather smoothly versified little tales he enforces the 
1 Chalmers: English Poets, vol. x1v. 


MISCELLANEOUS BOOKS ON WOMEN 337 


ordinary maxims included in the accepted social creed for 
women. Only the last one goes out of the realm of decorum 
and domesticity. In “The Owl and the Nightingale” the Night- 
ingale represents the woman who “minds the duties of her 
nest” and sings the song taught her by nature, and so gains 
applause from man and bird. The opposite type is represented 
by the Owl who, puffed up with self-conceit, spends her time in 
pedantry ahd sloth. The owl-like lady vaunts her own wits, 
twits her husband with his inferiority, and lets her children go 
ragged and dirty. 


With books her litter’d floor is spread, 
Of nameless authors, never read; 

Foul linen, petticoats, and lace 

Fill up the intermediate space. 

Abroad, at visitings, her tongue 

Is never still, and always wrong; 

All meanings she defines away, 

And stands, with truth and sense, at bay. 


Samuel Richardson was the first to make feminism an issue 
in fiction. Pamela and Clarissa Harlowe have samuel 
the characteristics counted ideal by Richard- Richardson 
_ son, and both of these young ladies have not only exceptional 
facility with the pen, but they have an education superior to 
that of most girls of their day, and they have educational ideas 
far ahead of their time. Though Clarissa was very young when 
she died, she is represented as having accomplished much. In 
fine needlework she excelled cloistered nuns, pieces of her work 
being sent even to Italy to show the skill of English maidens. 
She had a pretty hand at drawing, and, even when her execu- 
tion was faulty, she was nevertheless “absolute mistress in the 
should-be of art.” She knew French and Italian well, and had 
read the chief poetry in those tongues as well as in English. 
She had also begun Latin. She read aloud fluently and cor- 
rectly, with grace and dramatic effect. Her maxim was, “All 
that a woman can learn above the useful knowledge proper to 
her sex, let her learn.” But she had no patience with a “learned 


338 THE LEARNED LADY 


slattern,” and deprecated any education that could turn a 
woman away from domestic economy. Pamela was but sixteen 
when she married and her education had been in the main that 
gained through four years with Lady B. But after her marriage 
she settles into a routine of life, one element of which is three 
hours a day for study. Italian, French, geography, and arith- 
metic receive particular attention. The chief pleasures in her 
home are intellectual ones. Her first theatrical season in Lon- 
don presents her in the réle of dramatic critic. Ambrose Phil- 
ips’s The Distressed Mother and Steele’s Tender Husband had 
awakened tears and laughter from a generation of play-goers, 
before Pamela, self-appointed censor of the stage, revealed 
their immoralities and improbabilities. It is also Pamela who 
is chosen to lay bare the absurdities of the Italian opera. At 
her husband’s wish she writes an extended essay in which she 
dissects Locke’s Treatise on Education with explanatory and 
critical comments. Furthermore, quite apart from these tech- 
nicalities of education, Richardson has given to Pamela, Cla- 
rissa, and Miss Howe an independent personality. They are 
not mere puppets of relatives or of circumstances. They strive 
valiantly to direct the course of their lives according to the dic- 
tates of their own reason and conscience. Parents and hus- 
bands are not the arbiters of their destiny. They hold to their 
own views in spite of adverse public opinion and private au- 
thority. Nor do they cling to their theories with a mere meek 
and silent obstinacy. They argue down all opponents. The 
whys and the wherefores are at their tongues’ end. Conscience, 
mind, and will are in their own keeping. 

These striking characteristics of Richardson’s heroines pre- 
sent in concrete form opinions frequently stated by him in his 
letters. Those to Lady Bradshaigh are sufficient to indicate 
the stand he took. This correspondence belongs in 1750 and 
1751. The more important letters are the following: r 


Lady Bradshaigh to Richardson. 
I own I do not approve of great learning in women. I believe it 
rarely turns out to their advantage. No farther would I have them to 


MISCELLANEOUS BOOKS ON WOMEN _ 339 


advance, than to what would enable them to write and converse with 
propriety, and make themselves useful in every stage of life. I hate to 
hear Latin out of a woman’s mouth. There is something in it, to me, 
masculine. I could fancy such a one weary of the petticoat, and talk- 
ing over the bottle. You say “the men are hastening apace into dic- 
tionary learning.” The less occasion still for the ladies to proceed in 
their’s. I should be ashamed of having more learning than my hus- 
band. And could we, do you think, help shewing a little contempt, 
finding ourselves superior in what the husband ought to excel in. 
Very few women have strength of brain equal to such a trial: and 
as few men would forego their lordly prerogative, and submit to a 
woman of better understanding, either natural or acquired. A very 
uncomfortable life do I see between an ignorant husband and a 
learned wife. Not that I would have it thought unnecessary for a 
woman to read, to spell, or speak English; which has been pretty 
much the case hitherto. I often wonder we can converse at all; much 
more, that we can write to be understood. Thanks to nature for what 
we have! 


Richardson to Lady Bradshaigh. 

Dear Madam, 

You do not approve of great learning in women. Learning in 
women may be rightly or wrongly placed, according to the uses made 
of them. And if the sex is to be brought up with a view to make the 
individuals of it inferior in knowledge to the husbands they may hap- 
pen to have, not knowing who those husbands are, or what, or whether 
sensible or foolish, learned or illiterate, it would be best to keep them 
from writing or reading, and even from the knowledge of the common 
idioms of speech. Would it not be very pretty for the parents on both 
sides to make it the first subject of their inquiries, whether the girl as 
a recommendation, were a greater fool, or more ignorant, than the 
young fellow; and if not, that they should reject her, for the booby’s 
sake? — and would not your objection stand as strongly against a 
preference in mother-wit in the girl, as against what is called learning; 
since linguists, (I will not call all linguists, learned men,) do very sel- 
dom make the figure in conversation that even girls, from sixteen to 
twenty, make. 

If a woman have genius, let it take its course, as well as in men: 
provided she neglect not anything that is more peculiarly her prov- 
ince. If she has good sense, she will not make the man she chuses, 
who wants her knowledge, uneasy, nor despise him for that want. 
Her good sense will teach her what is her duty; nor will she want re- 
minding of the tenor of her marriage vow to him. If she has not, she 


340 THE LEARNED LADY 


will find a thousand ways to plague him, though she knew not one 
word beyond her mother-tongue, nor how to write, read, or speak 
properly in that. The English, Madam, and particularly what we call 
the plain English, is a very copious and a very expressive language. 


Lady Bradshaigh to Richardson. 


I will not approve of learning in women. You, not even you, shall 
persuade me to it; that is no farther than I have already allowed 
which I think is pretty extensively; let them study that, domestic 
duties, and other necessary acquirements, and they will have employ- 
ment enough to keep them out of mischief, if their inclinations are not 
strong that way: and if they were as learned as the most learned you 
can name, I have a notion these same whisperings must, in some de- 
gree, be attended to; and whilst they have ears they will be open to 
flattery and whilst men have tongues these ears will be filled with it. 
Learning cannot change nature, but it can make a woman ridiculous, 
a woman of sense I mean. Then, if it was once become customary, all 
parents would think their children qualified, and say, “If, please God, 
my girl shall be a scholar,” as the men say of their boys, boobies or 
not: and what figures would most of us make! — Everything moves 
easiest in its own sphere. Indeed, Sir, great learning would make 
strange work of us. You know we are to submit and obey; and it is 
much as ever we can do, often more, in our inferior state of knowl- 
edge. I speak of acquired learning. What we have from good sense 
and natural genius, nobody can take from us. And the more a woman 
has of those, the better she must appear if along with those, she has 
good nature and humility. 


Richardson to Lady Bradshaigh. 


Your Ladyship will not “‘approve of learning in women.” I cannot 
help it. But do you not think, Madam, that the woman, who, addi- 
tionally to the advantages she has from nature, “has been taught to 
read and converse with ease and propriety”; who can read, spell; and 
speak English; may not be as justly feared by half the pretty fellows 
of this age, as if she could read and understand Latin? 

I do not allow, that because a man is superficial, a woman must be 
so too, for fear she should meet with a husband to whom she may 
have a superior understanding. Do you not remember whose these 
words are? “What a pity it is that true genius and merit should 
be veiled under the cloud of inactivity and modesty.” — “Strange! 
(adds this favourite of mine) that people will wrap up their talents 
and hide them.” 

In your Ladyship’s, of January 6, you say, “I hate to hear Latin 


MISCELLANEOUS BOOKS ON WOMEN 341 


out of a woman’s mouth: there is something in it to me masculine. I 
could fancy such a one weary of the petticoat, and talking over a bot- 
ile.”’ But, in this case, will not vanity and conceit shew themselves, 
where they are predominant, m a man’s as much as in a woman’s 
mind? Are there not pedantic men? Miss C lis an example that 
woman may be trusted with Latin and even Greek, and yet not think 
themselves above their domestic duties. But after all, I contend not 
that women should be taught either of these languages; nor do I hold 
languages to be great learning, as I hinted in my former. A linguis 
and a learned man may very well be two persons. [Meantime, allthat | 
I contend for, is, that genius, whether in men or women, should take 
its course: that, as the ray of divinity, it should not be suppressed. 
But I acknowledge that the great and indispensable duties of women 
are of the domestic kind; and that, if a woman neglect these, or de- 
spise them, for the sake of science itself, which I call learning, she is 
good for nothing. 
But would you not, Madam, have called me by some hard name, 
had I supposed the sex, in general, so conceited, so self-sufficient, so 
naturally weak in judgment, as you do? and had I asserted, that the 
more they knew, the worse they would be for it? I believe, I have ob- 
served in a former, that neither of us will let anyone but ourselves 
speak slightly of the sex. 


Lady Bradshaigh to Richardson (March 29, 1751). 

I think we pretty nearly agree, as to learning in women. And I was 
glad to find our opinion corresponding with an author esteemed by 
the judicious. In the letters of Balzac to Mr. Chapelain, are the fol- 
lowing words: “I could more willingly tolerate a woman with a beard, 
than one that pretends to learning. In earnest, had I authority in the 
civil government, I would condemn all those women to the distaff, 
that undertook to write books, that transform their souls by mascu- 
line disguise, and break the rank they hold in the world.” 


Few bits of correspondence could be more illuminating. 
Lady Bradshaigh holds the conventional mid-century view 
while Richardson represents the most advanced feminist ideas 
of his day. Mrs. Makin, Mary Astell, Lady Mary Wortley 
Montagu, and “Sophia” asked hardly more than Richardson 
freely grants. 

In his letters to Miss Margaret Collier, Richardson is most 


1 “The elder Miss Collier,” mentioned in a previous letter. 


342 THE LEARNED LADY 


earnest in his defense of literary women. In answer to her com- 
plaint that Fielding’s Voyage to Lisbon was counted an inferior 
work and hence attributed to her, he “‘inveighed vehemently” 
against women who published anonymously, and wished it in 
his power to punish those geniuses of the female sex who studi- 
ously “wrapped up their napkin’d talents,” elaborately con- 
cealing their “God-given talents.” “‘ What is it that they fear? 
... [sit that the men will be afraid of them, and shun them as 
wives? Unworthy fear! Let the wretches shun and be afraid 
of them. Unworthy of such blessings, let such men not dare to 
look up to merits so superior to their own; and let them enter 
into contract with women, whose sense is as diminutive as their 
own souls.” Miss Collier answers (with a deep sigh) that a 
preference for “‘little-minded creatures” and an aversion to 
women of uncommon understanding is not confined to the 
wretches he anathematizes, but is as characteristic of “men of 
real good sense, great parts, and many fine qualities.” Miss 
Collier styles Richardson “the vindicator” of her sex, but he 
holds his wrath and asks, “‘ Who shall vindicate the honour of a 
sex, the most excellent of which desert themselves?” ! 


Fielding has, in Tom Jones, an entertaining learned lady in 
the person of Mrs. Western, the sister of Squire 
Western. She was of a masculine form, near six 
foot high, which, added to her manner and learning, possibly 
prevented the other sex from regarding her, notwithstanding 
her petticoats, in the light of a woman. “She had considerably 
improved her mind by study; she had not only read all the 
modern plays, operas, oratorios, poems, and romances — in all 
which she was a critic — but had gone through Rapin’s History 
of England, Eachard’s Roman History, and many French Mé- 
moires pour servir a l Histoire: to these she had added most of 
the political pamphlets and journals published within the last 
twenty years. From which she had obtained a very competent 


Henry Fielding 


1 Correspondence of Richardson (ed. Barbauld): ““Correspondence between 
Miss M. Collier, Miss Fielding, and Mr. Richardson.” Vol. u, pp. 59-112. 


MISCELLANEOUS BOOKS ON WOMEN 343 


skill in politics, and could discourse very learnedly on the af- 
fairs of Europe.” Squire Western did not approve of his 
sister’s learned tastes. “You know,” he says, “I do not love to 
hear you talk about politics; they belong to us, and petticoats 
should not meddle.” 

But in Fielding’s attitude towards his sister’s work, and in 
the personal opinions he expressed in the prefaces to her nov- 
els, we find quite a different tone. Mrs. Western represented a 
self-assertive, pretentious woman whose claim to learning was 
without justification, and as such Fielding satirized her. For a 
modest woman of real learning and ability Fielding had great 
respect. 


In Coventry’s Pompey the Little is a satirical sketch of a 
“Lady Sophister” who had visited most of the Pompey the 
courts of Europe and who affected a character Little (1757) 
of wisdom. We first meet her at the bedside of Lady Tempest 
who is being attended by Dr. Kildarby and Dr. Rhubarb. 
Lady Sophister had associated with the literati in France 
‘where the ladies affect a reputation of science, and are able to 
discourse on the profoundest questions of theology and philoso- 
phy.” She had somehow caught up with the notion that the 
soul is not immortal, and she never found herself in the com- 
pany of learned men without launching forth into a discussion 
of this subject. “‘This extraordinary principle, to show that 
she did not take up her notions lightly and wantonly, she was 
able to demonstrate; and could appeal to the greatest authori- 
ties in defence of it. She had read Hobbes, Malebranche, 
Locke, Shaftesbury, Woolaston, and many more. But Locke 
was her principal favourite, and consequently she rested chiefly 
upon him to furnish her with quotations whenever her ladyship 
pleased to engage in controversy.”’ She attacks the two doctors 
with, “Have you ever read Mr. Locke’s controversy with the 
Bishop of Worcester?” and hardly waiting to triumph over 
their confused attempts to evade the question she proceeds: 

1 See p. 235. 


344 THE LEARNED LADY 


“What do you esteem the soul to be? Is it air, or fire, or zether, 
or a kind of quintessence, as Aristotle observed — a composi- 
tion of all the elements? ... You know Mr. Locke observes 
there are various kinds of matter. But first we should define 
matter, which, you know, the logicians tell us is an extended 
solid substance. Out of this matter some is made into rose and 
peach-trees; the next form which matter takes is animal life; 
from whence we have lions and elephants and all the race of 
brutes: then the last, as Mr. Locke observes, is thought, and 
reason, and volition, from whence are created men; and there- 
fore, you plainly see it is impossible for the soul to be im- 
mortal.” Dr. Rhubarb is dazed by this fluent reasoning, but 
protests he can recall nothing in Locke about roses and peach- 
trees and elephants and lions. “Nay, sir,” cried she, “can 
you deny me this? If the soul is fire, it must be extinguished; 
if air, it must be dispersed; if it be only a modification of mat- 
ter, then of course it ceases when matter is no longer modified; 
if it be anything else, it is exactly the same thing: and therefore 
you must confess — indeed, doctor, you must confess — that 
it is impossible for the soul to be immortal.” 1 Before such 
a rapid fire of phrases the doctors retire discomfited. It was 
generally thought that Mr. Coventry meant this sketch for 
Lady Orford, but even without this personal reference the 
passage would stand as Coventry’s estimate of many of the 
women of his day who were devoting themselves to meta- 
physics and knots of divinity. 


‘There i is NO more concise summing up of the arguments gen- 
erally advanced against the education of 
women in the first half of the eighteenth cen- 
tury than that given by Swift in the opening paragraphs of his 
essay entitled On the Education of Ladies: 


J Rertered Swift 


It is argued that the great end of marriage is propagation; that, con- 
sequently, the principal business of a wife is to breed children, and to 


1 Coventry: Pompey the Little, book 1, chap. v1. 


MISCELLANEOUS BOOKS ON WOMEN = 345 


take care of them in their infancy: That the wife is to look to her fam- 
ily, watch over the servants, see that they do their work: That she be 
absent from her house as little as possible: That she is answerable for 
everything amiss in the family: That she is to obey all the lawful com- 
mands of her husband, and visit or be visited by no persons whom he 
disapproves: That her whole business, if well performed, will take up 
most hours of the day: That the greater she is, and the more servants 
she keeps, her inspection must increase accordingly: for, as a family 
represents 2 kingdom, so the wife, who is her husband’s first minis- 
ter, must, under him, direct all the officers of state, even to the lowest; 
and report their behavior to her husband, as the first minister does to 
his prince: That such a station requires much time, and thought, and 
order; and, if well executed, leaves but little time for visits or diver- 
sions: That a humor of reading books, except those of devotion or 
housewifery, is apt to turn a woman’s brain: That plays, romances, 
novels, and love-poems, are only proper to instruct them how to carry 
on an intrigue: That all affectation of knowledge, beyond what is 
merely domestic, renders them vain, conceited, and pretending: That 
the natural levity of woman wants ballast; and when she once begins 
to think she knows more than others of her sex, she will begin to de- 
spise her husband, and grow fond of every coxcomb who pretends to 
any knowledge in books: That she will learn scholastic words; make 
herself ridiculous by pronouncing them wrong, and applying them 
absurdly in all companies: That in the meantime, her househould 
affairs, and the care of her children, will be wholly laid aside; her toilet 
will be crowded with all the under-wits, where the conversation will 
pass in criticising on the last play or poem that comes out, and she will 
be careful to remember all the remarks that were made, in order to 
retail them in the next visit, especially in company who know nothing 
of the matter: That she will have all the impertinence of a pedant, 
without the knowledge; and for every new acquirement, will become 
so much the worse.? 


This essay breaks off abruptly so that we cannot tell in what 
spirit Swift planned to carry on the discussion. But in “A Let- 
ter toa Very Young Lady on her Marriage” ? we get a some- 
what fuller statement showing his contempt for women in gen- 


1 Swift, Jonathan: Works (ed. Sir Walter Scott), vol. rx, pp. 260-64. 

2 “Mrs. Pilkington pretends that this letter was written on Lady Betty 
Moore’s Marriage with Mr. George Rochfort. But Mr. Faulkner, who is the 
more sound authority, supposed it addressed to Mrs. John Rochford, daugh- 
ter of Dr. Staunton.” (Swift: Works, ed. Scott, vol. rx, p. 203 n.) 


346 THE LEARNED LADY 


eral, but indicating possibilities in the way of improvement in 
specific cases: 


As divines say, That some people take more pains to be damned, 
than it would cost them to be saved; so your sex employ more thought, 
memory and application to be fools, than would serve to make them 
wise and useful. When I reflect on this I cannot conceive you to be 
human creatures, but a certain sort of species hardly a degree above a 
monkey; who has more diverting tricks than any of you, is an animal 
less mischievious and expensive, might in time be a tolerable critic in 
velvet and brocade, and, for ought I know, would equally become 
them. ...It is a little hard that not one gentleman’s daughter in a 
thousand should be brought to read or understand her own natural 
tongue, or to be judge of the easiest books that are written in it; as 
any one may find, who can have the patience to hear them, when they 
are disposed to mangle a play or novel, where the least word out of the 
common road is sure to disconcert them; and it is no wonder when 
they are not so much as taught to spell in their childhood, nor can 
ever attain to it in their whole lives. . . . I know very well that those 
who are commonly called learned women, have lost all manner of 
credit by their impertinent talkativeness; but there is an easy remedy 
for this, if you once consider, that after all the pains you may be at, 
you never can arrive in point of learning to the perfection of a school 
boy.! 


In harmony with this low estimate of the attainments of 
women is Swift’s famous aphorism, “A very little wit is valued 
in a woman as we are pleased with a few words spoken plain by 
a parrot.” 2 Too much emphasis could easily be given this ut- 
terance. It should be remembered that it was not part of a well- 


1 Swift: Works, ed. Scott, vol. rx, p. 209. De Quincey has an interesting 
comment on this passage: “Often, indeed, I had occasion to remember the 
cynical remark of Swift that, after all, as respects mere learning, the most 
accomplished woman is hardly on a level with a schoolboy. In quoting this 
saying, I have restricted it so as to offer no offence to the female sex intel- 
lectually considered. Swift probably meant to undervalue women generally. 
Now, I am well aware that they have their peculiar province. But that province 
does not extend to learning, technically so called. No woman ever was or will 
be a polyhistor, like Salmasius, for example; nor a philosopher; nor, in fact any- 
thing whatsoever, called by what name you like, which demands either of 
these two combinations which follow: — 1, great powers of combination, that 
is, of massing or grouping under large comprehensive principles; or, 2, severe 
logic.” (Works, ed. Masson, vol. xtv, p. 125.) 

2 Ibid., vol. 1x, p. 227. 


MISCELLANEOUS BOOKS ON WOMEN = _ 347 


considered theory. It was merely one of the many unrelated 
sayings written down when Swift and Pope resolved to commit 
to paper all the maxims, epigrams, and short reflections on life 
that they could think of in a day. The philosophy expressed 
counted for less than witty phrasing. 

So, too, with Swift’s brutal attacks on Mary Astell’s college. 
It is given undue significance if it is interpreted simply as an 
attack on higher education for women. His derision of the col- 
lege was an angry outburst against a particular learned woman 
who had used her wit to make fun of the Kit-Kat Club. It was 
Mary Astell the satirist rather than Mary Astell the defender 
of learned women who awakened his spleen.? 

On the whole, Swift seems to have been favorably disposed 
towards women of genuine and unpretentious learning. His 
friendly services to the Irish poetesses, especially to Mrs. Bar- 
ber and Mrs. Pilkington, while rather condescending in tone, 
nowhere indicates any condemnation of their aspirations in 
the way of writing and publishing. In the “Letter to a Very 
Young Lady” he comments unfavorably on the women who 
spend their youth in exploiting their beauty, and their later 
years in visits and cards, and says, “Whereas I have known 
ladies at sixty, to whom all the polite part of court and town 
paid their addresses, without any further view than that of en- 
joying the pleasure of their conversation.” And he advised the 
young wife to seek out good books and elevating conversation 
in order to raise herself above the general degrading level of her 
sex: 


You must improve your mind by closely pursuing such a method 
of study asI shall direct or approve of. You must get a collection of 
history and travels, which I will recommend to you, and spend some 
hours every day in reading them, and making extracts from them 
if your memory be weak. You must invite persons of knowledge and 
understanding to an acquaintance with you, by whose conversation 
you will learn to correct your taste and judgment.* 


1 Swift: Works, ed. Scott, vol. rx, p. 217. 
2 See p. 303. 3 Tid., vol. Ix, p. 208. 


348 THE LEARNED LADY 


More convincing still is Swift’s estimate of Stella. From her 
childhood he had trained her mind and selected her reading, 
and we must assume that he had formed her character and de- 
termined her acquirements according to the feminine model he 
most admired. When he praised her it was her intelligence on 
which he put emphasis. He said of her: 


Never was any of her sex born with better gifts of mind, or who 
more improved them by reading and conversation. . . . She was well 
versed in the Greek and Roman story, and was not unskilled in that 
of France and England. She spoke French perfectly, but forgot 
much of it by neglect and sickness. She had read carefully all the 
best books of travel, which served to open and enlarge the mind. She 
understood the Platonic and Epicurean philosophy, and judged very 
well of the defects of the latter. She made very judicious abstracts of 
the best books she had read. She understood the nature of govern- 
ment, and could point out all the errors of Hobbes, both in that and in 
religion. She had a good insight into physic, and knew somewhat of 
anatomy; in both which she was instructed in her younger days by an 
eminent physician, who had her long under his care, and bore the 
highest esteem for her person and understanding. She had a true 
taste of wit and good sense, both in poetry and prose, and was a per- 
fect good critic of style. Although her knowledge, from books and 
company, was much more extensive than usually falls to the share of 
her sex, yet she was so far from making a parade of it, that her female 
visitants, on their first acquaintance, who expected to discover it by 
what they call hard words and deep discourse, would be sometimes 
disappointed, and say, “They found she was like other women.” But 
wise men, through all her modesty, whatever they discoursed on, 
could easily observe that she understood them very well, by the judg- 
ment shown in her observations, as well as in her questions.! 


Swift did net consider a woman as a slave ora toy. An alert 
mind, a fund of varied information, an intelligent interest in 
books and general affairs, seemed to him necessary qualifica- 


tions in a woman who would be a suitable companion for a man 
of sense. 


Pope was interested in questions of education and general 

learning. His own training had not come 

through the regular channels of public schools 

and university, so perhaps as an observer ab extra the defects 
1 Craik, Henry: Life of Jonathan Swift, vol. 1, Appendix x1. 


Alexander Pope 


MISCELLANEOUS BOOKS ON WOMEN 349 | 


of the system were more apparent to him than to those brought 
up in it. At any rate he protested against corporal punish- 
ment, against the monotony of a narrow and fixed curriculum, 
against vague metaphysics and dry-as-dust textual criticism. 
But in this general discussion he did not touch upon the ques- 
tion of woman’s education. His attitude towards learned la- 
dies was a personal one. When he was in love with Lady Mary 
Wortley Montagu, the luster of her “heavenly mind,” her 
learning, and her wisdom, were celebrated along with the grace 
and beauty depicted by Kneller.1 But when she was no longer 
in favor she became “that dang’rous thing, a female wit.” ? In 
The Rape of the Lock he addressed the wayward goddess of the 
Cave of Spleen as: 


Parent of vapors and of female wit, 

Who give th’ hysteric, or poetic fit, 

On various tempers act by various ways, 
Make some take physic, others scribble plays.® 


The “women-wits” apparently protested against these lines, 
or at least Lady Winchilsea did, and he responded with a con- 
ciliatory Impromptu to Lady Winchilsea, six lines of which are 
as follows: 

In vain you boast Poetic Names of yore, 

And cite those Sapphos we admire no more: 

Fate doomed the Fall of every Female Wit; 

But doomed it then, when first Ardelia writ. 

Of all examples by the world confess’d, 

I knew Ardelia could not quote the best. 


But Pope is never as undisguisedly himself in eulogy as he is 
in satire, and his real opinions probably came out when he and 
Gay and Arbuthnot sat down to write a play which should ade- 
quately represent their separate and combined hostilities. The 
assignment to Pope of the character of Phcebe Clinket, the 
authoress, shows not only his attitude towards Lady Winchil- 

1 On the Picture of Lady M. Wortley Montagu by Kneller. 


2 Epistle to Dr. Arbuthnot, ll. 368-69 and note. 
3 The Rape of the Lock, canto tv, ll. 59-62. 


350 THE LEARNED LADY 


sea, but probably towards the tribe of women wits as well. 
“Most women have no characters at all” ?is Pope’s general 
summary; and the highest compliment he could pay to Martha 
Blount, the woman for whom he cared most, was that she had 
“‘Sense and Good Humour.” ? In any comparison with Stella, 
Martha Blount seems a very commonplace personage to rank 
as a poet’s friend. 


Bishop Burnet opposed Mary Astell’s plan for a college, and 
he disliked any pushing into public affairs by 
women. “I thought,” he said, “there were two 
sorts of persons that ought not to meddle in affairs, though 
upon very different accounts. These were churchmen and 
women. We ought to be above it, and women were below it.” 
And when he first heard of Lady Margaret Kennedy, he was 
unwilling to meet her because of her unfeminine interest in 
politics. 

Yet Bishop Burnet was not absolutely opposed to the educa- 
tion of women. When he gave instructions as to the choice of a 
wife, “a good understanding” and “a liberal education”’ were 
among the characteristics to be sought. His objection to Mary 
Astell’s plan was due to his fear that a lay monastery such as 
she described might be hostile to the interests of the Church. 
He even advocated academies devoted to “women’s education 
and religious retreat,” and he thought that “monasteries with- 
out vows” might be set on foot in such a fashion as to be “the 
honor of a Queen on her throne.” 4 

He also found especial pleasure in the society of educated 
women. When he finally met Lady Margaret Kennedy, he fell 
in love with her in spite of her politics. They were married in 
1671, and when, after her death, he summed up her character, 
he put particular stress on her intellectual attainments. “She 
was a woman,” he wrote, “of much knowledge, had read 


Bishop Burnet 


1 See Three Hours after Marriage, p. 893. 
2 Epistle II. To a Lady. Of the Characters of Women. 3 Tbid. 
4 T. E.S. Clarke and H. C. Foxcroft: Life of Bishop Burnet, p. 436. 


MISCELLANEOUS BOOKS ON WOMEN _ 351 


vastly; she understood both French, Italian and Spanish; she 
knew the old Roman and Greek authors well in the transla- 
tions; she was an excellent historian and knew all our late af- 
fairs exactly well, and had many things in her to furnish out 
much conversation.” ! 

Bishop Burnet’s second wife was Mrs. Mary Scott, whom 
he married in Holland about 1687. In the Life of Burnet it is 
said of her: “ With these advantages of birth, she had those of a 
fine person; was well skilled in drawing, music, and painting; 
and spoke Dutch, English, and French equally well. Her 
knowledge in matters of divinity was such as might rather be 
expected from a student than from a lady. She had a fine un- 
derstanding and sweetness of temper, and excelled in all the 
qualifications of a dutiful wife, a prudent mistress of a family, 
and a tender mother of children.” 2 

Bishop Burnet’s third wife has already been noted as a re- 
ligious writer. Her work was brought to completion and publi- 
cation through his encouragement and coéperation. 

He also chose intellectual women as friends. He corre- 
sponded with Mrs. Wharton, and wrote frequent poems to her, 
and said he “rejoiced in her life and friendship beyond all 
things of this world.” Nor did the fact that she was an author- 
ess disturb him. He even wrote verses in imitation of her 
verses.? 

It is evident that Dr. Burnet enjoyed the individual woman 
of alert intelligence and trained mind, but that he deprecated 
any but the most carefully guarded schemes for a general 
extension of educational advantages to women. 


John Wesley was always susceptible to the charms of women, 
but his lack of discrimination and insight in 
regard to them led to several disastrous affairs 
of the heart, and finally, at forty-eight, to a more disastrous 

1 Foxcroft, H. C.: Supplement to Burnet’s History of My Own Timez, p. 85. 


2 Letters of Lady Russell, vol. u, p. 2 0. 
3 A Paraphrase on the 53d Chapter of Isaiah in imitation of Mrs. Anne 


John Wesley 


352 THE LEARNED LADY 


marriage. These circumstances must be taken into considera- 
tion in reading his various utterances on married life. In a 
tract on Marriage he wrote that the duties of a wife may all be 
reduced to two: 1. She must recognize herself as the inferior of 
her husband. 2. She must behave as such. No such order of 
precedence had prevailed in the Epworth rectory, and the 
mother he almost worshiped would have scorned such rules. 
They grew rather from his unhappy union with the domineer- 
ing, suspicious, obstinate Mrs. Vazeille. When he wrote to her, 
‘Be content to be a private, insignificant person, known and 
loved by God and me. Leave me to be governed by God and 
my own conscience. Then shall I govern you with gentle 
sway, and show that I do indeed love you, even as Christ the 
Church”; he was not so much expressing his idea of inevitable 
masculine authority, as he was trying to calm one woman 
whose jealous frenzies destroyed his private happiness and 
threatened to injure his work.! 


John Duncomb’s Feminead: or, Female Genius, was written 
Foha Dunceee in 1751 when he was but twenty-two. It is a 
The Feminead tame and feeble production, but since it ante- 
(1751) dates Mr. Ballard’s Memoirs and the Eminent 
Ladies, Mr. Duncomb’s glorification of female genius should 
have at least the credit of being an original idea. And however 
halting the expression, his poem embodied a genuine enthusi- 
asm that puts it in line with the newer ideas of the mid-eight- 
eenth century. The list of learned ladies presented is not a 
long one. Comedy writers and writers of personal memoirs are 
sorrowfully and briefly dismissed as followers of a wanton muse. 
The virtuous ladies celebrated are led, of course, by the chaste 
Orinda. Those who succeed her are Lady Winchilsea, Mrs. 
Cockburn, Mrs. Rowe, the Countess of Hertford, Viscountess 
Irwin, Mrs. Wright, Mrs. Madan, Mrs. Leapor, Miss Carter, 
Mrs. Brooks, Miss Ferrar, Miss Pennington, Miss Mulso, and 
Miss Highmore. Several of these ladies find their only com- 

1 Winchester: Life of Wesley, p. 179. 


MISCELLANEOUS BOOKS ON WOMEN _ 353 


memoration here. The Viscountess Irwin is deserving of “a 
grateful tribute from all female hands” because she rescued 
her sex’s cause from the aspersions cast upon it by Mr. Pope in 
his On the Characters of Women. The poetical epistle of the Vis- 
countess in rebuttal of his charges proved to be a true Ithuriel’s 
spear, and disarmed the witlings. Miss Pennington (after- 
wards Mrs. Peckard) wrote two odes on “Cynthia” and the 
“Spring” that appeared in Dodsley’s Collection, volume V. 
Miss Pennington’s The Copper Farthing, a burlesque imitation 
of Philips’s Splendid Shilling, was printed in Dilly’s Repository, 
volume I. She died in 1759, aged twenty-five. The others in 
the list are spoken of elsewhere in these pages, so need no 
further comment here. 

The poems open with an invocation to Richardson as “The 
sex’s friend and constant patron.” And there is a passage of 
national congratulation over the freedom with which British 
nymphs wander in the groves of Wisdom: 


Ev’n now fond Fancy in our polish’d land 
Assembled shews a blooming, studious band: 
With various arts our reverence they engage, 
Some turn the tuneful, some the moral page; 
These led by Contemplation, soar on high, 
And range the Heavens with philosophic eye; 
While those surrounded by a vocal choir, 

The canvas tinge, or touch the warbling lyre. | 


Young Mr. Duncomb of Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, 
was looking up his illustrations of female genius at the same 
time that Mr. Ballard of Magdalen, Oxford, was getting his 
elaborate Memoirs ready for the press. And each writer was 
apparently influenced in his views by some specific woman 
scholar or writer whom he knew and admired, and through 
whom he was led into a championship of the general cause. As 
the learned Miss Elstob, and the pretty coin-loving sister, 
stimulated Mr. Ballard, so Susanna Highmore apparently 
gave direction to Mr. Duncomb’s enthusiasm. He loved Miss 
Highmore (1730?-1812) through a protracted courtship of 


354 THE LEARNED LADY 


more than twelve years. She is the “Eugenia” of his poem and 
is described as “The Muse’s pupil from her tenderest years.” 
She was the daughter of Joseph Highmore, the artist. She be- 
longed to the Richardson coterie and was one of the group to 
whom he read Szr Charles Grandison. Her sketch of the scene 
forms the frontispiece to the second volume of Mrs. Barbauld’s 
Correspondence of Samuel Richardson. Her Fidelio and Honoria 
is the best known of her writings. 


In 1752 there was published at Oxford a significant book en- 
titled Memoirs of Several Ladies of Great Brit- 
George Ballard: 2 . ae 
Memoirs of Sev- a2, who have been Celebrated for their Writings 
eral Ladiesof = gp Skill in the Learned Languages Arts and Sci- 
Great Britain . 
ences. The author of this book was George 
Ballard of whose obscure life but a few chance details have 
reached our day. This is the more to be regretted since he was 
evidently a person of marked individuality. He was born in 
Campden, Gloucestershire, in 1706. His father was a poor man, 
and it was necessary for the children to be put early to work. 
Since George was sickly an easy trade was found for him and 
he was apprenticed to a stay-maker, or woman’s habrt-maker. 
His literary tastes were early apparent. At fourteen he read 
Fox’s Acts and Monuments of the Church, various books of po- 
lemical divinity, and a number of books against dissenters. 
He had antiquarian tastes, and while still young began a collec- 
tion of coins. Our most definite picture of him is as a young 
man of twenty, still a stay-maker, but already well known 
as an indefatigable collector. In the summer of 1726 Mr. 
R. Graves wrote to Mr. Hearne as follows: 


At Campden in Gloucestershire lives one Mr. Ballard, a Taylor, 
who hath a Daughter, a very pretty Girl, of about fourteen Years of 
Age, that hath an extraordinary Genius for Coins, & hath made an 
odd Collection of them. Mr. Granger (who came from thence last 
Night in his Return from London) saw her, and speaks much of her, 
w I took the more notice of because he is himself a good Judge of 
Coins, & hath an admirable Collection of them, especially of English 


MISCELLANEOUS BOOKS ON WOMEN 355 


ones. But, it seems, this young Girl is chiefly delighted with those 
that are Roman.! 


In February of the next year he wrote again: 


The bearer is the young tailor of Campden who has collected so many 
odd coins. ... The young Man, whose name is George Ballard has 
been all about the Country to pick up old money, and has got a great 
Number. ... When he has gott any new that I have not seen, he 
brings ’em to me to tell him whose they are. ...I suppose he will 
bring some of them with him to shew you.? 


In March Mr. Hearne recorded the visit of Mr. Ballard: 


Yesterday, in the afternoon, called upon me Mr. George Ballard, a 
young man (a Tayllour) of Campden in Gloucestershire, of whom I 
have heard Mr. Graves speak more than once. This Ballard is an in- 
genious, curious young man, & hath pickt up abundance of old Coins, 
some of w“ he shewed me. He hath been at many places about the 
country for that End. He hath also pickt up many of our Historians, 
& other English Books, & takes great delight in them, but he is no 
scholar. He is a mighty admirer of John Fox & talks mightily against 
the Roman Catholicks, tho’ I told him, that there are fifteen thousand 
Lyes in Fox, & brought him to some sense of the Abuses frequently 
put upon the poor Catholicks. 

He shewd me an old Ed. w* is the first of Historia Britannica. Mr. 
Ballard told me, about a week ago he met with a curious old Paint 
upon Board (an original, as he takes it) done excellently well, of 
Queen Catharine, the divorced wife of Henry VIII. 

Mr. Ballard hath a sister (which Mr. Graves used to talk also of) 
equally curious in Coins and Books with himself. He told me, she is 
twenty-three years of Age.® 

There came with Mr. Ballard, one Mr. Ellys, who deals in Laces 
ete. and is Brother in law to Mr. Ballard, having married another (one 
elder) Sister of Mr. Ballard’s, by whom he hath 2 children.‘ 


In May of the same year Mr. Hearne wrote: 


Yesterday Mr. Graves of Mickleton called upon us. He told me, 
that young Ballard the Taylor of Campden is out of his time, & hath 
very good business at his trade, but that he is now learning Latin, 


1 Hearne’s Collections, vol. rx, p. 185 (1914). 2 Thid., vol. 1x, p. 277. 
3 Cf. p. 354, where the sister is said to be “about fourteen.” 
4 Hearne’s Collections, vol. 1x, p. 282. 


856 THE LEARNED LADY 


going twice a day for that end to the School-master there, and that he 
hath a great mind to come and enter of [sic] some College or Hall in 
Oxford, but Mr. Graves gives him no encouragement, judging it better 
(& so I think too) to keep to his Trade. This young Ballard’s Great 
Uncle was a Doctor of Physick. Mr. Graves hath promised to send 
mne some account of him.! 


In spite of the contradictory statements as to the age of the 
attractive, coin-loving sister, there emerges from these letters 
a sufficiently definite picture of a household in which at least 
two talented young people were carrying on researches in line 
with the best antiquarian work of the day. 

We are not told when Mr. Ballard took up Anglo-Saxon. 
The letters to and by Mr. Hearne when Ballard was twenty- 
one and twenty-two do not mention Anglo-Saxon as one of his 
interests. Six years later we find him on intimate terms with 
Elizabeth Elstob whose Evesham School was but a few miles 
from Campden. It does not seem improbable that Miss Elstob 
introduced this promising young scholar to her own chosen 
field of work. He was, at any rate, so impressed by the dispro- 
portion between her learning and her toil-bound life that he 
became her knight-errant and finally set in motion influences 
that resulted in her freedom. Whether Miss Elstob introduced 
him to Anglo-Saxon, or merely joined her ripe scholarship to 
his young enthusiasm, their common interest results in a warm 
friendship that found in Anglo-Saxon its firmest bond. 

We have one interesting bit of testimony to the ardor with 
which Mr. Ballard pursued the new language. He needed 
an Anglo-Saxon dictionary, but not being able to buy one he 
borrowed, from Mr. Browne Willis, Somner’s Dictionary, and 
made a very beautiful transcript of it, with Thwaites’s addi- 
tions. This transcript was one of the manuscripts bequeathed 
by Mr. Ballard to the Bodleian. It was a tremendous piece of 
work, and it is small wonder that Mr. Ballard celebrated its 
completion by a “festival.” ? 


1 Hearne’s Collections, vol. 1x, p. 304. 
2 Letters of Eminent Persons, vol. 1, p. 118. 


MISCELLANEOUS BOOKS ON WOMEN = 357 


The advice given by Mr. Graves, that the ambitious young 
stay-maker should “keep to his trade,”’ was perforce followed. 
Most of his life was spent as a tailor at Campden, but in spite 
of this his fame for scholarship grew apace. In 1750 Lord 
Chedworth and the gentlemen of his hunt, who annually in the 
hunting season spent about a month at Campden, heard of his 
attainments, and they offered him an annuity of £100 for life 
in order that he might prosecute his studies. He gratefully ac- 
cepted £60 and set out at once for Oxford. He was made one of 
the eight clerks of Magdalen College, receiving his rooms and 
commons free. His life at Oxford was but a continuation of his 
activities at Campden. He had begun vast collections on vari- 
ous subjects and these he pushed nearer to completion. At his 
death, however, which occurred in 1755 and was occasioned, it 
was thought, by too strenuous application to study, the only 
work he had published was the Memoirs. He left to the Bod- 
leian forty-four volumes of manuscripts and original letters, 
including copies of some of his own writing, and all carefully 
indexed.! 

The preparation of the Memoirs was well under way before 
he went to Oxford, for Mr. G. Russell wrote to him, May 15, 
1759: “The work you are now engaged in, will I hope rescue us 
in a great measure from the too just accusation our neglect in 
Biography has occasioned, and you have this additional satis- 
faction in prospect, that as the Fair Sex are the subject, so they 
will be the Protectresses and Guardians of your performance. 
Their smiles, like a benign planet, will gradually ripen it to per- 
fection, and their breath embalm it to posterity.” ? The origi- 
nal manuscript of the Memoirs was in the possession of Mr. 
Gough and was sold with the rest of his books in 1811.* A copy 
of the first edition, in the Bodleian, contains manuscript notes 
in the handwriting of the author.‘ A second but inferior 
edition came out in 1775. 

_ When the Memoirs appeared in 1752, it attracted little 


1 Letters of Eminent Persons, vol. 1, p. 147 n. 
2 Jbid., vol. u, p. 128. * Ibid. vol.u, p.147n. * Jbid., vol. o, p. 123 n 


358 THE LEARNED LADY 


attention. The Monthly Review for February, 1753, is not laud- 
atory. The editor regrets that Mr. Ballard did not go farther 
back than the fourteenth century, that he has vainly spent his 
industry in rescuing from oblivion some ladies who might bet- 
ter have been left there, and finally that “so extraordinary a 
genius and so excellent a woman as Mrs. Cockburn, is wholly 
unnoticed in this work.” Other criticisms reached Mr. Ballard 
from private sources. They were based almost entirely on re- 
ligious and party lines. Mr. Ballard’s answer to a letter from 
Dr. Lyttleton, Dean of Exeter, will sufficiently indicate the 
tone of these criticisms. It was written May 22, 1753: 


The day before I received your first epistle a Gent. of my acquaint- 
ance brought me the Monthly Review for February, that I might see 
what the candid and genteel authors of that work had said of mine. 
They observe to the publick, that I have said C. Tishem was so skilled 
in the Greek tongue, that she could read Galen in its original, which 
very few Physicians are able to do. Whether this was done mali- 
ciously, in order to bring the wrath of the Msculapians upon me, or in- 
advertently, I cannot say: but I may justly affirm, that they have used 
me very ill in that affair; since if they had read with attention, which 
they ought to have done before they attempted to give a character of 
the Book, they must have known that the whole account of that Lady 
(which is but one page) is not mine, but borrowed with due acknowl- 
edgement from the General Dictionary. 'They are likewise pleased to 
inform the world that I have been rather too industrious in the un- 
dertaking, having introduced several women who hardly deserved a 
place in the work. I did not do this for want of materials; neither did 
I do it rashly, without advismg with others of superior judgment in 
those affairs, of which number Mr. Professor Ward was one. But 
those pragmatical Censors seem to have but little acquaintance with 
those studies, or otherwise they might have observed that all our gen- 
eral Biographers, as Leland, Bale, Pits, Wood, and Tanner, have trod 
the very same steps; and have given an account of all the authors 
they could meet with, good and bad, just as they found them: and 
yet, I have never heard of any one that had courage or ill-nature 
enough, to endeavour to expose them for it. While I was ruminating 
on these affairs, three or four letters came to my hands, and perceiv- 
ing one of them come from my worthy friend the Dean of Exeter, I 
eagerly broke it open, and was perfectly astonished to find myself 
accused of party zeal in my book; and that from thence the most can- 
did reader might conclude the author to be both a Church and State 


MISCELLANEOUS BOOKS ON WOMEN _ 359 


Tory. But after having thoroughly considered all the passages ob- 
jected to, and not finding the least tincture of either Whig or Tory 
principles contained in them, I began to chear up my drooping spirits, 
in hopes that I might possibly outlive my supposed crime; but, alas! 
to my still greater confusion! when I opened my next letter from a 
Tory acquaintance, I was like one thunderstruck at the contents of it. 
He discharges his passionate but ill-grounded resentment upon me 
most furiously. He tells me, he did not imagine Magdalen College 
could have produced such a rank Whig. He reproaches me with want 
of due esteem for the Stuart Family, to whom he says I have shown a 
deadly hatred, and he gives me, as he imagines, three flagrant in- 
stances of it. 1. That I have unseasonably and maliciously printed a 
letter of Queen Elizabeth’s, in order to blacken the memory of Mary 
Queen of Scots, and that, too, at a time when her character began to 
shine as bright as the Sun. 2dly. That I have endeavoured to make 
her memory odious, by representing her as wanting natural affection 
to her only son, in my note at p. 162, where he says I have printed part 
of a Will, ete. And 3dly, tho’ she was cut off in such a barbarous and” 
unprecedented manner, yet she has fallen unlamented by me. I am 
likewise charged with having an affection to Puritanism; the reasons 
for which are, my giving the Life of a Puritan Bishop’s Lady, which it 
seems need not have been done by me, had I not had a particular re- 
gard for her, since it had been done before by Goodwin who reprinted 
her Devotions. And not content with this, I have blemished my book 
with the memoirs of a Dissenting teacher’s wife, and have been kind 
enough to heighten even the character given her by her indulgent 
husband; and that I am very fond of quoting Fox and Burnet upon 
all occasions. These are thought strong indications of the above-men- 
tioned charge. It may be thought entirely unnecessary to answer any 
of the objections from Exeter, after having given you this Summary 
of my kind Friend’s Candid Epistle; but to you, Sir, to whom I could 
disclose the very secrets of my soul, I will endeavour to say a word or 
two upon this subject, and make you my Confessor upon this Occa- 
sion; and I will do it with as much sincerity as if I lay on my death- 
bed. Before I was fourteen years old, I read over Fox’s Acts and 
Monuments of the Church, and several of the best books of Polemical 
Divinity, which strongly fortified me in the Protestant Religion; and 
gave me the greatest abhorrence to Popery. And soon after I perused 
Mercurius Rusticus, The Eleventh Persecution, Lloyd, Walker’s Suf- 
ferings of the Clergy, and many others, which gave me almost as bad 
an opinion of the Dissenters. But then I learned in my childhood io 
live in Charity with all Men, and I have used my best endeavours to 
put this doctrine in practice all my life long. I never thought ill, or 


360 THE LEARNED LADY 


quarrelled with any man merely because he had been educated in 
principles different to mine; and yet I have been acquainted with 
many papists, dissenters, etc. and if I found any of them learned, in- 
genuous, and modest, I always found my heart well-disposed for con- 
tracting a firm friendship with them: and notwithstanding that, I 
dare believe that all those people will, with jot consent, vouch for 
me, that I have ever been steady in my own principles. 

T can truly affirm that never any one engaged in such a work, with 
an honester heart, or executed it with more unbiassed integrity, than 
I have done. And indeed, I take the unkind censures passed upon me 
by the furious uncharitable zealots of both parties, to be the strongest 
proof of it. And after all, I dare challenge any man, whether Protes- 
tant, Papist, or Dissenter, Whig or Tory, (and I have drawn up and 
published memoirs of women who professed all those principles) to 
prove me guilty of partiality, or to shew that I have made any un- 
charitable reflections on any person, and whenever that is done, I 
will faithfully promise to make a public recantation. I wish, Sir, you 
would point out to me any one unbecoming word or expression which 
has fell from me on Bishop Burnet. Had I had the least inclination to 
have lessened his character, I did not want proper materials to have 
done it. I have in my possession two original letters from Bishop Gib- 
son and Mr. Norris of Bemerton, to Dr. Charlett, which, if published, 
would lessen your too great esteem for him. And what, I beseech you, 
Sir, have I said in praise of Mrs. Hopton and her pious and useful la- 
bours, which they do not well deserve, and which can possibly give 
any just offence to any good man? I dare not censure or condemn a 
good thing merely because it borders upon the Church of Rome. I 
rather rejoice that she retains anything I can fairly approve. Should I 
attempt to do this, might I not condemn the greater part of our Lit- 
urgy, etc.? and should I not stand self-condemned for so doing? I can- 
not for my life perceive that I have said anything of that excellent 
woman, which she does not merit; and I must beg leave to say that I 
think her letter to F. Turbeville deserves to be wrote in letters of gold, 
and ought to be carefully read and preserved by all Protestants. Mary 
Queen of Scots fell under my notice, no otherwise than as a learned 
woman. The affairs you mention would by no means suit my peace- 
able temper. I was too well acquainted with the warm disputes, and 
fierce engagement both of domestic and foreign writers on that head, 
once to touch upon the subject. And indeed, unless I had been the 
happy discoverer of some secret springs of action which would have 
given new information to the public, it would have been excessive folly 
in me to intermeddle in an affair of so tender a nature, and of so great 
importance. 


MISCELLANEOUS BOOKS ON WOMEN 361 


I have often blamed my dear friend Mr. Brome for destroying his 
valuable collections, but I now cease to wonder at it. He spent his 
leisure hours pleasantly and inoffensively, and when old age came on, 
which not only abates the thirst, but oftentimes gives a disrelish to 
these and almost all other things, which do not help to make our pas- 
sage into eternity more easy, he then destroyed them (I dare believe) 
in order to prevent the malicious reflections of an ill-natured world. 

I have always been a passionate lover of History and Antiquity, 
Biography, and Northern Literature: and as I have ever hated idle- 
ness, so I have in my time filled many hundred,sheets with my use- 
less scribble, the greater part of which I will commit to the flames 
shortly to prevent their giving me any uneasiness in my last mo- 
ments.! 


The bitter feeling indicated by this letter, and the sense of 
disappointment resulting from criticisms so unsympathetic, 
must have been considerably mitigated by the noble list of 
subscribers with which the book was ushered into the world.’ 
That would indicate at least a financial success, and doubtless 
appreciation came from many unrecorded sources. 

Mr. Ballard’s book is of interest if it were only as a tour de 
force in the way of collecting materials from scattered sources. 
He sought far and wide for the facts he chronicles. All avail- 
able biographical dictionaries, general histories, county histo- 
ries, genealogical records, wills, funeral sermons, epitaphs, pub- 
lished works, private manuscripts, — all became the subjects 
of his indefatigable inquiries. He sought interviews, he wrote 
letters, he cajoled information from the most unlikely recesses. 
And he had an eye for picturesque and personal detail, so that 
out of his rapid and often disordered assemblage of facts it is 


1 Letters of Eminent Persons, vol. 0, p. 140. 

2 There was at first considerable doubt about the subscriptions. Mrs. De- 
lany wrote in February, 1752: “I can give you no encouragement about Mr. 
Ballard’s getting the Princess of Wales among his subscribers. I don’t think 
the Maid of Honour a proper person to apply to; if he would only leave out his 
dedication to me J could solicit for him, but as 2 is, it has even stopped my ap- 
plying to get subscriptions.” (Mrs. Delany’s Letters. First Series, vol. m1, 
p. 186.) In December she wrote: “I am afraid Mr. Ballard has not a large sub- 
scription; it vexes me that he should prevent my being of use to him, but if we 
are successful in our affairs I shall hope to make zt up to him.” (Ibid.) 


362 THE LEARNED LADY 


possible to reconstruct, in many instances, a vivid impression 
of real women in their form and habit as they lived. That closer 
scholarship should now and then find inaccuracies in his state- 
ments is no more than should be expected, and should in no de- 
gree invalidate his claim to recognition as having done an in- 
valuable piece of research in a biographical realm entirely new. 

The Memoirs is a handsome volume of 474 pages and con- 
tains sixty more or less extended biographies. Except for 
Queen Elizabeth the longest notice is in the twenty-four pages 
devoted to Margaret Roper, and the accounts range from that 
down to eight or ten lines. The order is approximately chrono- 
logical. The lives are divided into two portions with separate 
dedications. The first one reads, “To Mrs. Talbot of Kineton 
in Warwickshire the Following Memoirs of Learned Ladies in 
the Fifteenth and Sixteenth Centuries are most humbly in- 
scribed as an acknowledgement of my sincere and high regard 
for her and Mr. Talbot and as a small Testimony of Gratitude 
for Extraordinary Favours conferred by Both of Them upon 
their most obliged and most devoted humble servant George 
Ballard.” The second dedication was, ‘“’To Mrs. Delany the 
Truest Judge and Brightest Pattern of all the Accomplish- 
ments which adorn her Sex these Memoirs of Learned Ladies 
in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries are most humbly 
inscribed by her obedient servant George Ballard.” 

In the Preface Mr. Ballard comments on the value of bio- 
graphical records and then proceeds to a justification of his 
own work: 


The present age is so far from being defective in this respect, that 
it hath produced a greater number of excellent biographers than any 
preceding times: and yet, I know not how it hath happened, that very 
many ingenious women of this nation, who were really possessed of a 
great share of learning, and have, no doubt, in their time been famous 
for it, are not only unknown to the public in general, but have been 
passed by in silence by our greatest biographers. 

When it is considered how much has been done on this subject by 
many learned foreigners, we may justly be surprized at this neglect 
among the writers of this nation; more especially, as it is pretty cer- 


MISCELLANEOUS BOOKS ON WOMEN _ 363 


tain, that England hath produced more women famous for literary 
accomplishments, than any other nation in Europe. 


Those, whose memoirs are here offered to the publick, I have placed 
in the order of time in which they lived; omitting none, of whom 
I could collect sufficient materials. For as there may yet be some 
learned women of those times, whose characters I am an entire 
stranger to; so there are others, whom I well know to have been per- 
sons of distinguished parts and learning, but have been able to collect 
very little else relating to them. Such as, Lady Mary Nevil, Lady 
Anne Southwell, Lady Honor Hay, Lady Mary Wroath, Lady 
Armyne, Lady Ranelagh, Lady Anne Boynton (famous for her skill 
in ancient coins, and noble collection of them) Lady Levet, Lady 
Warner, Gentlewomen: Mrs. Mabilla Vaughan, Mrs. Elizabeth Grim- 
stone, Mrs. Jane Owen, Mrs. M. Croft, Mrs. Aemillia Sawyer, Mrs. 
Makins (who corresponded in the learned languages, with Mrs. Anna 
Maria 4 Schurman) Mrs. Gertrude More, Mrs. Dorothy Leigh, to- 
gether with many other learned and ingenious women, since the year 
1700; of those latter I have had the good fortune to make very con- 
siderable collections: and among the former, I had drawn up an ac- 
count of Mrs. Carew, in the same manner with the other memoirs, but 
omitted printing it by mere accident. 


The motto on the title-page, “Ht sane qui Sexum alterum ad 
studia idonewm negant, iam olim rejecti, fuere ab omnibus philoso- 
phis,” expresses the spirit of the book. Mr. Ballard was per- 
fectly genuine in his admiration of learned women. In his 
impressionable youth he had found his sister as intelligent in 
collecting old coins and books as he himself. Later the most 
learned Anglo-Saxon scholar he knew was Miss Elstob. His 
fervent recognition of his sister’s genius, his high sense of Miss 
Elstob’s learning, are but a forecast of the direction of his 
mature work. He had known two brilliant women, hence 
he had a belief in the possible intellectual achievements of 
women. He had seen one of these women, in spite of her con- 
structive and advanced scholarship, consigned to poverty and 
oblivion, and a sense of injustice took possession of his mind. 
The championship of Miss Elstob passed over into champion- 
ship of all learned women. His Memoirs, he hopes, will re- 
move “that vulgar prejudice of the supposed incapacity of the 


364 THE LEARNED LADY 


female sex.” To accomplish this end he relies in the main on 
a cool and unemphasized recital of facts. But now and then he 
allows himself to protest against some especial injustice. For 
instance, under the “Memoirs of Mary Countess of Pem- 
broke,” he says of her translation of the Psalms: 


But then we are informed by Sir John Harington, and afterwards 
by Mr. Wood, and from him by the late learned Dr. Thomas, that she 
was assisted by Dr. Babington then chaplain to the family, and after- 
wards Bishop of Worcester; for, say they, *t was more than a woman’s 
skill to express the sense of the Hebrew so right, as she hath done in 
her verse; or more than the English or Latin translation could give 
her. This argument has likewise been made use of by a certain di- 
vine to divest another worthy Lady of the honour of an excellent per- 
formance, in the composition of which was shown some skill in that 
primitive language. But why this should be thought a cogent argu- 
ment to prove it, I am very much at a loss to know; it being not so 
much as pretended, so far as I can be informed, that there is more 
skill required, or greater difficulties to be met with in acquiring that 
language, than there is in attaining an exact knowledge in the Greek 
and other tongues, which all the world knows numberless women 
have been perfectly well versed in. 

And that the female sex are as capable of learning this as any other 
language, appears so plain from many undeniable instances of it, as to 
render any farther disproof as to that assertion unnecessary. Let 
those who doubt of it, read what St. Jerom has recorded of the noble 
Lady Paula and her daughter Eustochium. The Lady Paula’s charac- 
ter he solemnly professes himself, and that upon a most solemn occa- 
sion, to have drawn not in the way of a Panegyric, but to have related 
everything with the strictest veracity; and therefore will not, I hope, 
be suspected of flattery, when he tells us that she, in her old age, 
did speedily learn it; and understood the language so. well as to 
speak it. 

Or if this be referring them too far back to antiquity, let them re- 
flect on the extraordinary learning and abilities of Mrs. Anna Maria 4 
Schurman; who was not only well skilled in Greek and Latin, but in 
the Hebrew, Syriac, Arabic, Chaldaic, etc. And we are told [in Eve- 
lyn’s Numismata] that Ludovisia Sarracennia, a Physician’s daughter 
of Lyons, understood and spoke Hebrew and Greek at the age of eight 
years. To let pass many other foreign examples, I shall only observe 
that our own Kingdom produced several women in the last century, 
who were famous for their skill in Hebrew, etc. Particularly a young 


MISCELLANEOUS BOOKS ON WOMEN _ 365 


lady of the North family, who was well versed in the Oriental lan- 
guages. Mrs. Bland a Yorkshire gentlewoman was so well skilled in 
it, that she taught it to her son and daughter. Likewise the late Mrs. 
Bury of Bristol, and others, of whom I need say no more here, since 
they will be remembered in this catalogue. 


Again, under “Lady Pakington,” the question of Hebrew 
comes up. One gentleman has told him that The Whole Duty of 
Man and the other treatises by the same author could not be 
by a woman because they were too deeply learned, and another 
gentleman wrote that the “many quotations from Hebrew 
writers” precluded female authorship. But Mr. Ballard an- 
swers: 


And since skill in the Hebrew language is made use of as a convinc- 
ing argument (tho, for my part, I can not find one Hebrew quotation 
in the whole book) he may please to understand, that besides the justly 
celebrated Mrs. Anna Maria 4 Schurman, and many other foreign 
ladies; we have had several domestic examples of Women who have 
been famed for their skill in that primitive language, viz., Lady Jane 
Gray, Lady Killigrew, a Lady of the Nottingham family, another 
Lady of the North family, Lady Ranelagh, Mrs. Bury, and Mrs. 
Elizabeth Bland of Beeston in Yorkshire. | 


The success of Mr. Ballard’s Memoirs in 1752 led to the pro- 
duction in 1755 of Poems by Eminent Ladies, poems py 
“Printed for R. Baldwin, at the Rose, in Pater- Eminent Ladies 
Noster-Row.”} The brief Preface reads in ‘755) 
part as follows: 


These volumes are perhaps the most solid compliment that can 
possibly be paid to the Fair Sex. They are a standing proof that great 
abilities are not confined to the men, and that genius often glows with 
equal warmth, and perhaps with more delicacy, in the breast of a fe- 
male. The Ladies, whose pieces we have here collected, are not only 
an honour to their sex, but to their native country; and there can be 


1 The ladies whose poems are included in these volumes are: Mrs. Barber, 
Mrs. Behn, Miss Carter, Lady Chudleigh, Mrs. Cockburn, Mrs. Grierson, 
Mrs. Jones, Mrs. Killigrew, Mrs. Leapor, Mrs. Madan, Mrs. Masters, Lady 
M. W. Montagu, Mrs. Monk, Duchess of Newcastle, Mrs. K. Philips, Mrs. 
Pilkington, Mrs. Rowe, Lady Winchilsea. 


366 THE LEARNED LADY 


no doubt of their appearing to advantage together, when they have 
each severally been approved by the greatest writers of their times. 
It is indeed a remarkable circumstance, that there is scarce one Lady, 
who has contributed to fill these volumes, who was not celebrated by 
her cotemporary poets, and that most of them have been particu- 
larly distinguished by the most lavish encomiums either from Cowley, 
Dryden, Roscommon, Creech, Pope, or Swift. 

There is indeed no good reason to be assigned why the poetical at- 
tempts of females should not be well received, unless it can be demon- 
strated that fancy and judgment are wholly confined to one half of 
our species; a notion, to which the readers of these volumes will not 
readily assent. It will not be thought partiality to say that the reader 
will here meet with many pieces on a great variety of subjects excel- 
lent in their way; and that this collection is not inferior to any mis- 
cellany compiled from the works of men. 


The short accounts of the several writers, prefixed to each of their 
poems, were compiled from the best materials we could meet with. 
The life of Mrs. Behn in particular, (which is very entertaining) is ex- 
tracted from The Lives of the Poets, by Mr. Theophilus Cibber and 
others. For many of the rest we are obliged to Mr. Ballard’s entertain- 
ing Memoirs of Learned Ladies. 


The two unimpressive volumes of this publication make 
rather more interesting reading than most miscellanies, but 
there is no hint of latent genius. The ladies are merely clever 
versifiers. They manage the heroic couplet with the mechani- 
cal skill of Pope’s lesser imitators. Their verses jingle in the 
close with sufficient accuracy. Pope’s antitheses and balanced 
structures, his oratorical figures, his use of pungent personal 
portraiture, are characteristics that find many enfeebled 
echoes. In subject-matter and general tone the books present 
an impeccable front. The authors would be sure to prefer 
Steele’s Ladies’ Library to Mrs. Pilkington’s Love in Excess, yet 
they are not conspicuously strait-laced. The poems are nearly 
all occasional and gain thus a note of reality, and, though no 
lady attains to genuine humor or actual lightness of touch, there 
are evidences of a brightness of spirit, a vivacity, a quickness of 
repartee, that remove the poems from the realm of the purely 
imitative and conventional. 


MISCELLANEOUS BOOKS ON WOMEN _ 367 


Among the literary curiosities of the eighteenth century are 
two books by Thomas Amory. One of these, = ME a 3 
Memoirs of Several Ladies of Great Britain, ap- eral Ladies of 
peared in 1755 in two volumes. The first vol- aaa 
ume of the second work, The Life of John Bun- 
cle, was published in 1756, and a second volume appeared in 
1766. When he began the Memoirs he had planned to extend 
the series to eight volumes, but he did not carry it beyond the 
second volume of John Buncle. The full title of the Memoirs ! 
indicates its character as a medley of unrelated observations, 
disquisitions, and opinions. John Buncle has a less erratic 
plan, some order being given by the fact that the hero engages 
in seven successive matrimonial ventures in the course of his 
travels through Yorkshire and the Lake District. But the 
books are alike in aim, both being an exposition of Christian 
Deism. John Buncle’s wives are all either able advocates of 
Socinianism when he meets them, or they have minds so at- 
tempered that on hearing the tenets of that faith they ardently 
embrace it. The ladies in both books are introduced with a 
Defoe-like apparatus of seemingly accurate details as to dates, 
locations, and particular circumstances. Although these ladies 
have had a great variety of romantic adventures and differ 
somewhat as to wealth and social position, they are essentially 
alike in character and function, the one purpose of the au- 
thor being through them to exemplify and explain his religious 
beliefs. The interesting point is that Mr. Amory in creating 
ideal and learned defenders of his views should have chosen 
young ladies. And this was deliberately done. He states it as 
his conviction “that the faculties and imagination of women’s 
minds properly cultivated may equal those of the greatest 
men,” and he advocates a higher education for young women 

1 Memoirs: Containing the Lives of Several Ladies of Great Britain. A History 
of Antiquities, Productions of Nature and Monuments of Art. Observations on 
the Christian Religion, as professed by the Established Church, and Dissenters of 
every Denomination. Remarks on the Writings of the greatest English Divines: 


with a Variety of Disquisitions and Opinions relative to Criticisms and Manners; 
and many extraordinary Actions. 


368 THE LEARNED LADY 


of sufficient fortune: “It would be so far from making them 
those ridiculous mortals Moliére has described under the char- 
acter of learned ladies; that it would render them more agree- 
able and useful, and enable them by the acquisition of true 
sense and knowledge, to be superior to gayety, dress and dissi- 
pation. They would be glorious creatures then. Every family 
would be happy.” 

In accordance with this view his young ladies in the Memoirs 
and John Buncle have not only virtue, wealth, and beauty, but 
learning of the most specialized and difficult sort. One girl of 
twenty had been for five years studying under the tutelage of 
a Scotchman and had attained great proficiency in “arithme- 
tic, Algebra, and fluxions.’”’ On her first interview with the au- 
thor she discoursed for ten uninterrupted pages on the method 
of fluxions and so wrought upon her hearer’s admiration that 
“for a full quarter of an hour after she ceased he sat looking 
at her in the greatest astonishment.” But he recovered suffi- 
ciently to secure the mathematical prodigy as his fourth wife. 
Another “master in the fluxionary way” was a Mrs. Benslow, 
and most of the ladies found a perennial source of joy in alge- 
bra and arithmetic. But the realm in which their minds luxu- 
riated was that of speculative theology. They read books on 
religious faiths, ancient and modern, they discussed the most 
abstruse problems of metaphysics, and they carried ethical 
problems into the most attenuated ramifications. 

The lady who seems to be in all ways Mr. Amory’s ideal is 
Miss Harriot Eusebia Harcourt. She appears in both books, 
and in definiteness of personality is superior to any of the other 
characters. It is not impossible that Amory gives under her 
name a highly idealized portrait of some one he knew. The 
Biographium Femineum, published in 1766, was so impressed 
by Miss Harcourt as to catalogue her among distinguished 
Englishwomen, but the entire account seems to be based on 
Amory’s characterization. She is also admitted as a real per- 
son in Female Biography, by Miss Mary Hays, in 1803, and in 
Rose’s New Biographical Dictionary, in 1839. But Miss Har- 


MISCELLANEOUS BOOKS ON WOMEN _ 369 


court is almost certainly a fictitious character. If any woman 
had really accomplished what is described in Amory’s books, it 
is incredible that there should have been no contemporary 
notice of so novel an experiment. 

According to Amory, Miss Harcourt was born in 1705. She 
received a learned education supplemented by nine years of 
travel in Europe with her father who secured for her the best 
masters in the languages of the different countries, so that she 
became an accomplished linguist. On the death of her father 
in 1733 she inherited a large fortune which she was free to 
spend according to her own ideas. Her acquaintanceship with 
noble nuns in various parts of Europe had convinced her that a 
life similar to theirs, but outside the Catholic Church, would 
be ideal. She thereupon returned to England and with eleven 
like-minded ladies she organized a society of “Reformed Re- 
cluses.”” On her estate in Richmondshire she built a beautiful 
cloister as a winter residence. In the summer the Society occu- 
pied a charming villa on the Green Island, a part of her father’s 
property in the western islands of Scotland. Amory says that 
he was shipwrecked on this island and that during his long 
stay there he became intimately acquainted with the details of 
Miss Harcourt’s scheme of life. On so agreeable a theme he 
allowed his imagination free rein. The magnificent situation of 
the Green Island gave full scope for descriptions of wild and 
romantic scenery.” For the things wrought by the hand of man 
in the grounds about the villa, he had but to take hints from 


1 The Memoirs (vol. m1, p. 87) say that Miss Harcourt “died suddenly, at 
her seat in Richmondshire, the first of December 1745, in the 39th year of her 
age, and not in the year thirty-seven, as the world was told in several adver- 
tisements in the London Evening Post of December 1739, by a gentleman who 
was imposed on in a false account he received of her death.” I have been un- 
able to examine the London Evening Post to see whether it contains any an- 
nouncement correspondent to Amory’s statement. (Rose says she was born in 
1706 at Richmond in Yorkshire and that she died in 1745.) 

2 For Amory’s exceptionally early and eager descriptions of the English 
Lake District see Reynolds, Myra: External Nature in English Poetry between 
Pope and Wordsworth (2d ed.), p. 208. To this must now be added his distinc- 
tion as one of the earliest Englishmen to be interested in the islands off the 
coast of Scotland. 


370 THE LEARNED LADY 


some of the great English gardens, notably that at Stowe. The 
Elysium, the marble busts, the Rotunda, at Stowe, were al- 
most certainly the original of his Elysian Fields, groups of 
marble statues, and Orbicular Building. And as these external 
details stimulated his fancy to the production of an Aladdin- 
like garden, so such suggestions as those of Mary Ward’s “In- 
stitute,” or especially Mary Astell’s “Protestant Nunnery,” 
stimulated his active mind into working out the details of sucha 
plan. He described not only the constitution of such a society, 
its financial status, and its general aims, but he went into all 
the minutiz of dress, meals, social customs, diversions, occupa- 
tions. The ladies paid £500 on entrance, they took no vows of 
celibacy, they had no prioress, they lived well, they had abun- 
dant service, they dressed richly. The badge of their order was 
a large diamond cross. No one was admitted who had nota 
taste for music. Musical composition, playing on different in- 
struments, singing, painting, and drawing were the elegant di- 
versions. There was a large and well-selected library, and the 
ladies made researches according to their taste, with the proviso 
that once a week they must read to the rest the result of their 
labors — a sort of multifarious and inchoate seminar. The ap- 
proved papers were recorded in a club book called Didaskalia. 
These ladies being Christian deists and having minds un- 
clouded by the mists of superstition, enthusiasm, and atheism, 
spent much time in rational devotion. Mr. Amory becomes 
ecstatic as the picture of this ideal society grows under his hand 
and finally declares that if he were a woman of fortune he 
would at once seek out this happy society of religious recluses 
with a certainty that no other life on the globe could offer such 
felicity. He approves of Miss Harcourt’s last act which was to 
will her large fortune as an endowment for this cloistral house. 
A fanciful dream, but one that constantly brings to mind Ten- 
nyson’s Princess. Only to Amory’s Green Island there came no 
disrupting influences of love and childhood. He left his ladies 
still enjoying their learned seclusion, and filling volume after 
volume of the Didaskalia, painting great pictures, producing 


MISCELLANEOUS BOOKS ON WOMEN — 371 


original oratorios, making abstruse speculations, and serving 
God with calm hearts.! 


1 For further accounts of Thomas Amory see The Genileman’s Magazine, 
November, 1788 (vol. tym, p. 1062), where there is a protest from Robert 
Amory concerning erroneous statements about his father in the St. James’s 
Chronicle of November 6 (cf. vol. trx, pp. 107, 322, 372); General Biographical 
Dictionary (1798); Chalmers’ Biographical Dictionary; Hazlitt’s Round Ta- 
ble (1817); Retrospective Review (vol. v1, p. 100, 1st Series, 1822); edition of 
Amory’s Works (1825); Notes and Queries, 1st Series, vol. x1, p. 58; Saturday 
Review, May 12, 1877. From these references it becomes apparent that Amory 
has attracted considerable attention, but that there is a wide divergence of 
opinion as to whether he was insane or a genius. 


CHAPTER V 


SATIRIC REPRESENTATIONS OF THE LEARNED LADY 
IN COMEDY 


Tue artificial comedy of the seventeenth and eighteenth 
centuries in England is of genuine significance as a social docu- 
ment. Its purpose was to hold up to ridicule whatever in con- 
temporary life, especially the life of the every-day middle-class 
world, could be counted foolish or absurd. In its pages nearly 
every phase of ordinary human activity could look upon its 
more or less distorted image, and the taste and temper of the 
times are pretty fairly measured by the personages accepted 
by dramatists, actors, and audiences as legitimate sources of 
comic appeal. 

Literature offered a surprisingly rich field to the writers of 
comedy. Tragedies and comedies, the new Italian opera, farces, 
pantomimes, harlequinades, pastoral dramas, were parodied, 
burlesqued, and criticized on the stage. Individual authors, 
theater-managers, actors, and actresses, were ever-recurring 
figures in the popular comedy. Quite a little library might, 
for instance, be gathered of the satiric representations of Colley 
Cibber, Theophilus Cibber, and Susanna Maria Cibber. 

Other popular comic types were heroes and heroines marked 
by national characteristics. An illuminating social study might 
be made of the Irishman in comedy, the many ancestors of 
Sheridan’s “Sir Lucius O’ Trigger,” as “Sir Teague O’Divelly,” 
“Sir Calligan O’Bralligan,” “Mr. O’Connor MacCormack,” 
“Major O’Flaherty,” and the rest of the truculent, honey- 
tongued, generous, blundering tribe. There are stage Scotch- 
men and Welshmen represented by “Sir Pertinax MacSyco- 
phant,” “Mr. Apreece,” and their congeners. The Frenchman 
as valet, music-master, dancing-master, and villain-in-ordinary 
to the heroes is ubiquitous. 

Or we might study the professions. Physicians line up on 


L 


SATIRIC REPRESENTATIONS 373 


the stage as quacks, charlatans, conscious impostors. Lawyers 
are pictured as men whose sole purpose is to hide ignorance and 
knavery in a cloud of words, and to empty the pockets of their 
clients in a trumped-up pursuit of justice. 

The Church does not escape. The Puritan who in Restora- 
tion drama was represented as a psalm-singing, whining, long- 
faced hypocrite, concealing a vicious life under a pretense of 
rigid sanctity, was replaced as a comic type in the early eight- 
eenth century by the non-juror, and when later Wesley’s 
tabernacle and Foote’s play-house were competing for popular 
favor, it was the Methodist who obtained the bright reversion, 
there being ascribed to him all the cant and hypocrisy of his 
forbears. 

Society is likewise represented in all its follies and vices. Of 
genuine social importance is a study of the long line of “fops,”’ 
“coxcombs,” “pretty fellows,” “beaux,” “macaronies,” 
“dudes,” as they were variously called, from “Sir Solomon, 
the Cautious Coxcomb,” in 1669, through “Sir Fopling Flut- 
ter,” “Sir Courtly Nice,” “Sir Novelty Fashion,” “Lord Fop- 
pington,” “Sir William Mode,” “Mr. Apeall,” “Sir Brilliant 
Fashion,” “Lord Trinket,” “Brisk,” “Flutter,” “Sparkish,” 
and the rest of the inane tribe, with their laces and frills, their 
powdered wigs, their enameled snuff-boxes, their ivory combs 
and pocket-mirrors, their muffs and canes, their inordinate 
vanity, affectation, and empty-headedness. 

Learning, too, found its place on the stage. From the estab- 
lishment of the Royal Society in 1662, the work of the Gresham 
professors was the theme of unbridled ridicule. The virtuoso 
who spent his whole time with a telescope investigating the 
geography of the moon or with a microscope determining the 
nature of the bloom on a plum; the anatomist, the geologist, 
the antiquarian, were counted fair game for the satirist. 


I. Tax Learnep Lapy as A Comic Type 


In this multifarious activity of the comic spirit it would be 
strange if any pretense to learning on the part of women should 


374 THE LEARNED LADY 


escape. And we are, in fact, presented with a motley procession 
of mock Minervas. Even as early as Jonson there was some 
recognition of the comic potentialities of the learned lady as a 
type. In Epicene (1609) Morose is warned against matrimony 
by Truewit who recounts the ways in which a learned wife 
could shatter his peace. Proud to show her Latin and Greek, 
she might talk all day like a parrot; or, cunning in controversy, 
she might attack the very knots of divinity; or, considering 
herself a critic, she might “censure poets, and authors, and 
stiles, and compare *hem, DANIEL with SPENSER, IoNSON with 
tother youth, and so foorth.”’ ! But this summary seems to be 
less a reflection of contemporary life than an echo from Juve- 
nal’s Sixth Satire.? More bitterly satirical is Jonson’s repre- 
sentation of the “Collegiate Ladies,” “‘an order between court- 
iers and country madams, that live from their husbands.” But 
these ladies make no pretense to learning. Lady Haughty and 
her coadjutors are frivolous, affected, profligate women whose 
“college-grammar” and “college-honours” ? have no signifi- 
cance beyond the amorous intrigue for which their order was 
founded. The play reads as if there had been some contempo- 
rary organization at which Jonson’s satire was directed, but no 
record of such an organization is extant. At any rate, the satire 
was against women who considered themselves emancipated 


1 Epicene, or, The Silent Woman, Act nr, Se. 2, Il. 117-20. 

2 Juvenal: Satire v1, 434-40. “That woman is a worse nuisance than usual 
who, as soon as she reclines on her couch, praises Virgil; makes excuses for 
doomed Dido; pits bards against one another and compares them, and weighs 
Homer and Mars in the balance.” 

3 The word “college” was loosely used in the seventeenth century as signi- 
fying any company or collective body. Burton, in Anatomy of Melancholy 
(1621), says, ““They have whole colleges of Curtezans in their Towns and 
Cities.” Randolph, in The Muse’s Looking-Glass (1638), calls play-houses 
“colleges of transgression,” and speaks of “ Black-Friar’s College.” Jonson, 
in Staple of News, says “a canter’s college is proposed.” Dryden even speaks 
of a “college of bees” (Flower and Leaf), and Amory, in John Bumele, uses 
the same phrase more than half a century later. It becomes evident, then, 
that the words “college” and “collegiate” might be used without any 
thought of an organization founded for purposes of learning. (See Jonson: 
Epicene, Ed. Henry, Aurelia, p. 138.) 


SATIRIC REPRESENTATIONS 375 


from conjugal life, rather than against learned women as such. 
In The Devil is an Ass (1616) Jonson brings into some promi- 
nence “a Lady Projectress” who is said to deserve the grati- 
tude of the commonwealth of ladies for her great undertakings 
in their behalf. But her solid service is in the realm of Spanish 
fashions and new cosmetics. 

Jasper Mayne, in The City Match (1639), has a fling at the 
“new foundation” and “the philosophical Madams” in a man- 
ner even more contemptuous than that of Jonson. He also 
presents a Mrs. Scruple, a Puritan school-mistress learned in 
religious lore, who can expound the Scriptures, who “works 
Hebrew samplers and teaches to knit in Chaldee.” Her pu- 
pil Dorcas makes “religious petticoats,” substituting church 
histories for flowers, and sanctifying cushionets and smock- 
sleeves with holy embroideries. But it seems to be the reli- 
gious zea] that is here satirized, with only an incidental reflec- 
tion on the learning implied in a knowledge of Hebrew and 
Chaldee. 

These remote hints did not result in the establishment of a 
stage type. It was through Moliére that the learned lady took 
her place in English comedy. The immediate object of Mo- 
liére’s attack was the coterie of the Hétel de Rambouillet, a 
salon established about 1615. The avowed purposes of this 
exclusive literary circle were to rid the French tongue of impu- 
rities, to cultivate le beau and le vrai bel amour and bel conver- 
sation. They had a vocabulary peculiar to themselves, and they 
devulgarized French by calling common things by uncommon 
names. They improvised stories and rhymes, played literary 
games, called themselves by noms de Parnasse, and held ex- 
alted views on friendship, love, and marriage, which they end- 
lessly discussed. In the time of its greatest power some of the 
most noted men and women of France belonged to this salon, 
but gradually pedantry and affectation had crept in, and the 
extravagances of the later Précieux and Précieuses in thought, 
speech, and manners awakened the ridicule of Moliére. In his 
Preface to Les Précieuses (1659) he protested that the true 


376 THE LEARNED LADY 


Précieuses could not rightly be vexed at a satire meant only for 
those absurd people who wretchedly imitated them. But it is 
nevertheless apparent that his play was an attack on the whole 
assembly of learned or pseudo-learned ladies and gentlemen 
who made up the salon, with particular attention to the ladies. 
In this play he satirized especially bel amour, poetic improvisa- 
tion, and fine language. 

Thirteen years later he returned to the general subject in a 
more elaborate play, Les Femmes Savantes (1672), where, in 
the characters of Armande, Bélise, and Philaminte, he repre- 
sented the false delicacy of the learned ladies, the absurdities 
of their struggle for pure diction, their puerile literary enthusi- 
asms, their affected interest in science and philosophy, their 
neglect of all the ordinary duties of life, and the essential hy- 
pocrisy of their professedly platonic attitude towards husbands 
and lovers. 

Moliére’s plays were well known to the earliest English play- 
wrights of the Restoration.! Etherege had seen Les Précieuses ” 
on the French stage, and the impression it had made upon him 
was evidenced by his Sir Fopling Flutter, a brilliant English 
version of Moliére’s Mascarille, but Etherege nowhere takes 
up the ideas represented by Madelon and Cathos. Wych- 
erley had personally known the circle of the Hétel de Ram- 
bouillet during his stay in France from 1655 to 1660,’ and he 
could not have failed to know of the sensation created by Mo- 
ligre’s attack on the noted salon. And throughout his work 
he was profoundly influenced by Moliére in his general concep- 
tion of true comic material and methods. But apparently the 
learned-lady theme did not appeal to him as especially suitable 
for English treatment. Or possibly the very fact of his close 
association with some of the most brilliant members of the sa- 
lon made him averse to a satiric representation even of their 
absurdities. 

The first comedy to show any direct influence of Madelon 


1 Miles, Dudley: The Influence of Moliére on Restoration Comedy, chap. m1. 
2 Thid., p. 62. 3 Tbid., p. 68. 


SATIRIC REPRESENTATIONS 377 


and Cathos is Dryden’s Mock Astrologer (1668).1_ Donna Aure- 
lia is like her ancestors in Les Précieuses in her attempts at 
fine language. She is unable “to speak ten words without some 
affected phrase that is in fashion.” In direct imitation of the 
French damsels she calls her looking-glass “the counsellor of 
the graces,” and urges upon her maid fashionable language and 
pronunciation. In her effort to secure striking phraseology she 
does not rise above the constant use of “furious.” She has a 
‘furious inclination” for the occult sciences, a “furious ten- 
der” for Don Melchor, and a ghost is a “furiously furious” ap- 
pearance. Her indigence of epithets puts her far behind Mo- 
liére’s nimble-tongued young ladies, but she certainly strives 
to be in the same class. 

The influence of Moliére became more apparent after the 
presentation of Les Femmes Savantes in 1672. In Dryden’s 
Marriage a la Mode (1672) is a really vital and entertaining 
picture of a lady with a literary fad. Melantha is one of the 
sprightliest and most convincing of the comedy heroines be- 
fore Congreve’s Millamant. Melantha is a Sicilian town lady, 
young, fair, and rich; a finished coquette, an inveterate 
news-monger, a hanger-on of the court. She would, she says, 
rather be “mal traitée at court than deified in the town.” She 
accordingly overdoes what she considers to be court character- 
istics. Especially does she ape the French. French dances and 
clothes, French plays and ballets, French words, all that’s 
writ in France, fill her with rapture. Her lover does not win her 
by his face or fortune, but by his rapid fire of French terms. 
Melantha belongs to the cult of the précieuses in her joy over 
fine language. An Indian gown, a gimp petticoat, a new point 

1 There are two other indications of the early influence of Les Précieuses. 
Flecknoe published in 1667 an unacted play entitled Damoiselles & la mode, a 
sort of mosaic made up from four plays of which Les Précieuses was one. Sep- 
tember 15, 1668, Pepys wrote: ““To the King’s play-house, to see a new play, 
acted but yesterday, a translation out of French by Dryden, called ‘The Lady’s 
4 la Mode’: so mean a thing as when they came to say it would be acted again 
to-morrow, both he that said it, Beeson, and the pit fell a-laughing, there being 


this day not a quarter of the pit full.” Pepys is the only authority for attribut- 
ing the piece to Dryden. 


378 THE LEARNED LADY 


gorget, are tossed to her maid Philatio as a reward for any new 
words she may bring in. Melantha counts it an ignominy to 
use vulgar, threadbare words that are fit for nothing but to 
be thrown to peasants. She practices her vocabulary with her 
glances at the mirror, and makes up effective sentences into 
which she may run new acquisitions such as naiveté, sottises, 
embarrass, and is most unhappy when they prove recalcitrant 
and are lost in the rapid interplay of talk. 

Melantha is an admirable example of social satire, a delight- 
fully audacious representation of a contemporary folly. France 
was the recognized home of culture and good-breeding. No 
courtier or fashionable lady could be counted as having the last 
word in refinement who had not spent some time on French 
soil, and the French language was one of the most important 
studies of the higher classes in England. What was taken for 
granted in court circles became, of course, the ne plus ulira of 
the ambitious town lady. But her hastily acquired and imper- 
fect knowledge would lead to mistakes and over-emphasis, the 
result being a character of genuinely comic import. For the 
stage interpretation of Melantha actresses doubtless had many 
a social model among the town ladies with violent court aspira- 
tions. Cibber says that Melantha was “as finish’d an Imperti- 
nent as ever flutter’d in a Drawing-Room,” and that she con- 
tained “the most compleat System of Female Foppery that 
could possibly be crowded into the tortured Form of a Fine 
Lady.” And chief among her fopperies was her preciosity, a 
characteristic marked in most of the learned ladies represented 
in seventeenth and eighteenth century comedy. 

Mrs. Behn’s Sir Patient Fancy came out late in 1678 and was 
based for its chief intrigue on Moliére’s Le Malade Imaginaire 
which had appeared in 1673. But the character of Lady Know- 
ell, ‘‘an affected learned woman,” reverted to Les Femmes 
Savantes. She is the young stepmother of Lord Knowell’s mar- 
riageable son and daughter and is of considerable importance 
in the general movement of the play, but her real function is to 
present a caricature of a learned lady. She understands Greek, 


SATIRIC REPRESENTATIONS 379 


Latin, and Italian. She cannot endure “divine Homer” in 
a translation: ‘Ton d’apamibominous prosiphe podas ochus 
Achilleus! Ah how it sounds! which English’t dwindles into 
the most grating stuff: — Then the swift-footed Achilles made 
reply.” As she looks upon the frivolous young girls of the play 
she exclaims: “I’m for the substantial pleasure of an Author. 
Philosophemur! is my Motto. ...Oh the delight of Books! 
When I was their age I always employed my looser Hours in 
reading — if serious, ’t was Tacitus, Seneca, Plutarch’s Morals, 
or some such useful Author; or in an Humour gay, I was for 
Poetry, Virgil, Homer, or Tasso.” 

To this emphasis on the classics is added a preciosity which 
consists of misdirected attempts to use impressive language. 
Lady Knowell is an early and not very amusing Mrs. Mala- 
prop. Her “hard words”’ are sometimes legitimate words to 
which she attaches a wrong meaning, as in the sentence, 
“There is much Volubility in Human Affairs,’ when she means 
“variability.”” But most of her words are compounded of por- 
tions of others each one of which contains some shade of her 
meaning; as, “ Were I querimonious [querulous, acrimonious] I 
should resent the affront”; “Notwithstanding your Expro- 
bations [expostulations, disapprobations]”; and “I saw your 
Reclination [revolt, declination] from my Addresses.’’ These 
bungling attempts to play with language are too far-sought, 
too puzzling, to bring instant laughter, but they suffice to es- 
tablish Lady Knowell as at least a would-be precursor of Mrs. 
Malaprop a century later. 

The young ladies make sport of Lady Knowell. Lucretia 
does not approve of her learning. “Methinks,” she says, “to 
be read in the Arts, as they call ’em, is the peculiar Province of 
the other Sex.” Isabella is of much the same opinion, yet she 
feels that women might easily surpass most University men: 
“Indeed the Men . . . boast their Learning and Languages; but if 
they can find any one of our Sex fuller of Words, and to so little 
Purpose as some of their Gownmen, I’ll be content to change 
my Petticoats for Pantaloons and go to a Grammar-school.” ._ 


380 THE LEARNED LADY > 


In Shadwell’s Sullen Lovers (1669) is a Lady Vaine who calls 
herself a “Virtuosa”’ and is learned in medicaments. She 
boasts of her serviceableness with her “Flos Unguentorum, 
Paracelsian, and Green-salve,” and praises the Album Grecum 
as a salve of her own concoction. 

Of much more interest is Shadwell’s Bury-Fair (1689). The 
chief characters are Lady Fantast, Mrs. Fantast, and Lady 
Fantast’s stepdaughter, Gertrude Oldwit, and their attendant 
cavaliers. The central action, the joke played on the Fantast 
ladies in imposing on them a barber dressed up to impersonate 
a French count, is taken from Les Précieuses. But Lady Fan- 
tast and her daughter have their direct ancestry in Philaminte 
and Armande in Les Femmes Savantes. Wildish who had at 
first loved Mrs. Fantast, but, on finding her a précieuse, had 
transferred his affections to Gertrude, is Moliére’s Clitandre, 
while Gertrude herself and Mr. Oldwit are the Henriette and 
Chrysale of the French play. The common sense of the play is 
embodied in Wildish, Gertrude, and Mr. Oldwit. Lady Fan- 
tast is not herself especially learned, but all her ambitions in 
that line have been concentrated on her daughter. “I have 
bred my daughter a linguist,” she proudly exclaims when 
the young lady quotes Latin. The two ladies converse as 
follows: 


Mrs. Fan. To all that, which the World calls Wit and Breeding, I 
have always had a natural Tendency, a penchen, deriv’d, as the Learned 
say, Ex traduce, from your Ladyship: Besides the great Prevalence of 
your Ladyship’s most shining Example has perpetually Stimulated 
me, to the Sacrificing all my Endeavours towards the attaining of 
those inestimable Jewels; than which, nothing in the Universe can be 
so mucha, mon gre, as the French say. And for Beauty, Madam, the 
Stock I am enrich’d with, comes by emanation from your Ladyship; 
who has been long held a Paragon of Perfection; Most Charmant, 
most Tuant. 

L. Fan. Ah, my dear Child: I! Alas, Alas! Time has been, and yet 
I am not quite gone; but thou hast thoce Attractions, which I bewail 
the want of: Poetry, Latin, and the French tongue. 

Mrs. Fan. I musi confess, I have ever had a Tendress for the Muses, 
and have a due Reverence for Helicon, and Parnassus, and the Graces: 


SATIRIC REPRESENTATIONS 381 


But Heroick Numbers upon Love and Honour are most Ravissant, 
most Suprenant; and a Tragedy is so Touchant! I dye at a Tragedy; 
I’ll swear, I do. 


‘Lady Fantast has an adoration of French equal to that of 
Melantha. ‘No Conversation,” she says, “can be refin’d and 
well-drest without French to lard it.” The false count wins his 
way with the ladies when he professes to believe them French: 


Count. Me vil gage a hundred Pistol, dat dat fine Ladeé and her 
ver pretty Sister, are de French Ladeé. 

L. Fan. We have often bewailed the not having had the honour to 
be born French. 

Count. Pardon me, is impossible. 

Mrs. Fan. Monfoy, je parle vray! we are meer English assurement. 

Count. Mon foy, je parle vray! vat is dat Gibberish? Oh, letté me 
see; de Fader is de Lawyere, an she learne of him at de Temple: is de 
Law French. Iam amazé! French Looké, French Ayre, French Mien, 
French Movement of de Bodee! Morbleu. Monsieur, I vil gage 4,500 
Pistol, dat dese two Sister vere bred in France, yes. Teste bleau, I can 
no be deceive. 

Mrs. Fan. Jee vous en prie, do not; we never had the blessing to 
be in France; you do us too much Honour. Alas, we are fore’d to be 
content with plain English Breeding: you will bring all my blood into 
a blush. I had indeed a penchen always to French. 


The barber-count makes fun of the French of the ladies Fan- 
tast, but in one of the conversations the joke is turned the other 
way, for Mrs. Fantast’s learning very nearly proves fatal to the 
count: 


Mrs. Fan. You know very well what the Poet says: 
Res est Sollicitt plena timoris amor. 

Count. Ver well, Madam, you be de most profound Ladee, and de 
great Scholar. — [Aside.] Morbleu, she vill findé me out! Begar, I can 
no read. 

Mrs. Fan. No, no assurement, pretty well read in the Classic 
Authors. Or so. Monsieur Scudery says very well: 

Lamour est une grande chose. 

Count. Hee bee ver pretty Poet too. — Begar she will puzzle me. 

Mrs. Fan. Poet, Monsieur! he writ Romances. 

Count. Ah, Madam, in France we callé de Romance, de Posie. 

Mrs. Fan. And as Monsieur Balzac says, Songez un peu. 


382 THE LEARNED LADY 


Count. Dat Balzac write de very good Romance. 
Mrs. Fan. Indeed! I never heard that. 
Count. Je vous assure. — A pox on her reading! 


Gertrude is the foil to Mrs. Fantast and she sees no necessity 
for the punctilious breeding of the ladies Fantast. “Breeding! 
I know no Breeding necessary, but Discretion to distinguish 
Company and Occasions; and Common Sense, to entertain 
Persons according to their Ranks; besides making a Curt’sie 
not awkwardly, and walking with one’s Toes out.” 

To so low-bred a view of manners Mrs. Fantast can only ex- 
claim, “Ars non habet Inimicum preter Ignorantem”’; but Ger- 
trude responds: “A Lady may look after the Affairs of a Fam- 
ily, the Demeanor of her Servants, take care of her Nursery, 
take all her Accounts every Week, obey her husband, and dis- 
charge all the Offices of a good Wife, with her Native Tongue; 
and this is all I desire to arrive at.” 

The two ladies are especially obnoxious to Mr. Oldwit, who 
exhausts a Billingsgate vocabulary in his irritation at their 
follies. He sums up his misery in the exclamation, “He that 
would have the Devil more damn’d, let him get him to marry a 
She-Wit!” 

Mr. Thomas Wright’s The Female Vertuosos (1693) is con- 
fessedly drawn from “the great Original of French Comedy.” 
Ten of the characters and most of the situations are plainly 
modeled on Les Femmes Savantes, but the name of the play 
and the idea of ridiculing the new science may have been sug- 
gested by Shadwell’s The Vertuoso, a popular attack on the 
Royal Society. Wright gains a trace of originality by trans- 
ferring his chief learned ladies from the realm of word-mongery 
to that of pseudo-science. The tone of the play is indicated by 
the prefixed quotation from Dryden’s translation of Juvenal’s 
Sixth Satire: 1 


1 Jt is interesting to note that the dedication is to Charles, Earl of Winchil- 
sea, whose aunt, Mrs. Finch, one of the literati, was at that time living with the 
young Earl, at Eastwell, and had even then a vast folio of verse and prose with 
which the family circle was occasionally regaled. She would hardly enjoy this 
choice of her nephew as public patron of Wright’s caricature of female wits. 


SATIRIC REPRESENTATIONS 383 


Oh what a Midnight Curse has he, whose Side 

Is pester’d with a Mood and Figure Bride! 

Let mine, ye Gods! if such must be my Fate, 

No Logic learn, nor History translate, 

But rather be a quiet, humble Fool: 

I hate a Wife to whom I go to School. 
The three ‘“Vertuosos” are Lady Meanwell, Mrs. Lovewit, 
and Catchat. Mrs. Lovewit has been making laboratory ex- 
periments in behalf of the literatz. She has collected all the 
plays that ever came out and is planning to put them im a lim- 
beck and extract all the quintessence of wit that is in them to 
sell by drops to the poets of the age. Mrs. Meanwell has just 
made the great discovery that rain comes from clouds. With 
a housewifely objection to the wet streets of London and a cor- 
responding sense of civic responsibility, she has invented a way 
of keeping the streets as dry and clean as a drawing-room the 
year round. She has just been to the Lord Mayor to propose 
her scheme, which is to erect a series of posts similar to the 
lamp-posts newly set up in London, equip them with great bel- 
lows, and have city watchmen to blow the clouds away. 
Catchat is interested in astronomy. Through a telescope she 
has seen men in the moon and been almost embarrassed by 
the loving looks cast upon her by the amorous sparks of that 
shining world. 

While science is the main interest in this play, the other ac- — 
cepted traits of the learned woman are not neglected. Catchat, 
for instance, has been nurtured on the Grand Cyrus and theo- 
retically accepts its cold guidance in matters of love. But her 
platonic ideals fade before her desires, and she becomes the 
most impassioned husband-hunter of the throng. Literary 
criticism is not omitted. Mr. Maggot Jingle’s poem “To the 
Countess of Squeezingham upon her Actr”’ gains rapturous 
praise from the ladies. The maid Lucy is about to be dis- 
charged for having committed “the horrid, scandalous, and 
exorbitant Offence” of saying that “Cowley, the wretched 
Cowley, was as good a poet as the incomparable Sir Maggot 
Jingle.” 


384 THE LEARNED LADY 


The domestic infelicity of Lord and Lady Meanwell is de- 
scribed as a result of the lady’s learning. Lord Meanwell says 
of her, “My wife is a terrible Dragon when she is out of Hu- 
mour; she makes indeed a High Boast of her Philosophy but 
she is not a bit the less Cholerick for it, and her Morals that 
teach her to look upon all Things with an indifferent Eye have 
not the least Influence on her Passions.” Lady Meanwell is 
a virago before whose hard words her husband shrinks into 
cowed submission. 

As an outcome of their combined wits these ladies are about 
to open an “Academy of Beaux Esprits,”’ where they may com- 
municate to each other such discoveries as they make, and 
which shall serve as an “Apollo’s Levee”’ to the Sapphos of the 
Age, and as a Sovereign Tribunal for all new books. 

Congreve’s contribution to the learned lady in comedy 
comes in The Double Dealer (1694), in the admirable figure of 
Lady Froth, “a coquet pretender to poetry, wit, and learn- 
ing.” Her pet affectation is that of an extravagant passion for 
her husband, Lord Froth, the solemn coxcomb of the play, 
and her affections have been bound up with her literary aspi- 
rations even from the days of their courtship. She had known 
love and sleepless nights and whimsies and vapors, but she had 
also known how to give them vent. 


Cynthia. How pray, Madam? 

Lady Froth. O I writ, writ abundantly; — do you never write? 

Cynthia. Write what? 

Lady Froth. Songs, elegies, satires, encomiums, panegyrics, lam- 
poons, plays, or heroic poems. 


By virtue of her learning and her lord’s title Lady Froth as- 
sumes superiority over Cynthia, the modest, sensible heroine. 


Lady Froth. My Lord Froth is as fine a gentleman and as much a 
man of quality! Ah, nothing at all of the common air!.. . I think I 
may say he wants nothing but a blue ribbon and a star to make him 
shine, the very phosphorus of our hemisphere.. Do you understand 
those two hard words? . . . Being derived from the Greek I thought 
you might have escaped the etymology. 


SATIRIC REPRESENTATIONS 385 


Her ladyship is also an author and has written an heroic 
poem on her connubial bliss. She communicates this fact to 
Brisk, the foolish critic. 


- Lady Froth. Did my lord tell you? yes, I vow, and the subject is my 
lord’s love to me. And what do you think I call it? I dare swear you 
won’t guess — “The Syllabub’; ha! ha! ha! 

Brisk. Because my lord’s title’s Froth, egad; ha! ha! ha! deuce 
take me, very @ propos and surprising, ha! ha! ha! 

Lady Froth. He! ay, is not it? — And then I call my lord Spumoso, 
and myself — what d’ ye think I call myself? 

Brisk. Lactilla, maybe; — ’gad I can not tell. 

Lady Froth. Biddy, that’s all, just my own name. 


Lady Froth was certainly not without a competent critical 
apparatus for writing poetry since she declares herself familiar 
with Bossu, Rapin, Dacier upon Aristotle, and Horace. The 
wittiest portion of the play is based on Moliére’s scene where 
the lady critics praise the foolish poet. In Congreve the foolish 
poet is a woman and the critic a man, but the comic situation 
is essentially the same. 


Lady Froth. Then you think that episode between Susan, the dairy- 
maid, and our coachman, is not amiss; you know I may suppose the 
dairy in town as well as in the country. 

Brisk. Incomparable, let me perish! — But then being an heroic 
poem, had not you better call him a charioteer? charioteer sounds 
great; besides, your ladyship’s coachman having a red face, and you 
comparing him ito the sun; and you know the sun is called Heaven’s 
charioteer. 

Lady Froth. Oh, infinitely better! I am extremely beholden to you 
for the hint; stay, we'll read over those half a score lines again. (Pulls 
out a paper.) Let me see here, you know what goes before, — the com- 
parison, you know. (Reads.) 


For as the sun shines every day, 
So, of our coachman I may say — 


Brisk. I’m afraid that simile won’t do in wet weather; because you 
say the sun shines every day. 

Lady Froth. No, for the sun it won’t, but it will do for the coach- 
man; for you know there’s most occasion for a coach in wet weather. 

Brisk. Right, right, that saves all. 
_ Lady Froth. Then, I don’t say the sun shines all the day, but that 


386 THE LEARNED LADY 


he peeps now and then; yet he does shine all the day too, you know, 
though we don’t see him. : 
Brisk. Right, but the vulgar will never comprehend that. 
Lady Froth. Well, you shall hear — Let me see. (Reads.) 
For as the sun shines every day, 
So, of our coachman I may say, 
He shows his drunken fiery face, 
Just as the sun does more or less. 
Brisk. 'That’s right, all’s well, all’s well — “More or less.” | 
Lady Froth. (Reads.) 
And when at night his labour ’s done, 
Then too, like Heaven’s charioteer the sun. 
Ay, charioteer does better. 


Into the dairy he descends, 

And there his whipping and his driving ends; 

There he’s secure from danger of a bilk, 

His fare is paid him, and he sets in milk. 
For Susan, you know, is Thetis, and so— 

Brisk. Incomparably well and proper, egad! — But I have one 
exception to make ;— don’t you think bilk (I know it’s good rhyme), 
but don’t you think “bilk” and “fare” too like a hackney-coachman? 

Lady Froth. I swear and vow, I am afraid so — And yet our Jehu 
was a hackney-coachman when my lord took him. 

Brisk. Was he? I’m answered, if Jehu was a hackney-coachman. — 
You may put that in the marginal notes though, to prevent criticism, 
and say, “Jehu was formerly a hackney-coachman.” 

Lady Froth. I will; you’d oblige me extremely to write notes on the 
whole poem. 


In 1697 there appeared a play by “W. M.” entitled Female 
Wits. Up to this time the character of the learned lady had 
been general in type and based pretty closely on Moliére, but 
with Female Wits the satire became personal. The point of the 
play was that the three “wits” should be recognized as rep- 
resenting specific ladies. Calista was Catherine Cockburn, a 
beautiful young girl who at seventeen had had the misfortune 
to have a tragedy brought out at the Theater Royal.! She was 
treated rather gently, being merely bantered for pretending to 
understand Latin and Greek. On being asked if she had read 

1 See p. 106. 


SATIRIC REPRESENTATIONS 387 


Cicero’s Oration she answered, “I know it so well as to have 
turned it into Latin.” Marsilia was Mrs. Manley, two of whose 
tragedies, The Royal Mischief and The Lost Lover, had appeared 
the preceding year.! She is represented as having a play in re- 
hearsal. In the meantime she has a new project on the stocks. 
She is going to show the superiority of the moderns to the 
ancients by a revision of “Catiline’s Conspiracy.” The first 
speech is to remain as it is in the original, while the others, re- 
written with all the ornaments of modern rhetoric, will show 
up, by contrast, the poverty of the Latin style. The sample 
she gives of her new version was undoubtedly a fling at heroic 
tragedy. Her address to Rome begins: “Thy fated Stones, and 
thy cemented Walls, this Arm shall scatter into Atoms. Then 
on thy Ruins will I mount! Mount, my aspiring Spirit, 
mount! Hit yon azure Roof and justle Gods!” Mrs. Wellfed, 
“a fat female author,” was at once known to stand for Mrs. 
Pix,” a writer of intolerable tragedies and poor comedies, and 
noted for her love of good living. Except for the personal refer- 
ence this play offers little that can be of interest. 

Vanbrugh’s Zsop (1699) is a play adapted from Boursault. 
ZEsop is the sage to whom successive people bring their prob- 
lems. To each one he gives a solution in a verse fable. Horten- 
sia, the heroine of one of these episodes, is described by her 
maid as “the wise Lady, the great scholar, that nobody can 
understand.” She loves “Words of Erudition,” and waxes elo- 
quent on philosophical abstractions. There is something in her 
nature that soars too high for the vulgar, but she hopes to find 
in sop a kindred soul because, as she says, “His Intellects 
are categorical.” But sop scorns her fine language. “Now 
by my Faith, Lady,” he answers, “I don’t know what Intellect 
is; and methinks categorical sounds as if you call’d me Names. 
Pray speak that you may be understood; Language was de- 
signed for it, indeed it was.” 

When Hortensia’s lover asks Hsop’s advice as to the best 
way to manage a “Philosopheress,” the wise man advises re- 

1 See p. 208. 2 See p. 132. 


388 THE LEARNED LADY 


treat while there is yet time. The little apologue of “The 
Linnet and the Nightingale” embodies his views and is the 
most trenchant expression so far come upon of the supposed 
permanent opposition between learning and the eternal femi- 
nine: 


Once on a time, a Nightingale 
To Changes prone; 
Unconstant, fickle, whimsical, 
(A Female one) 
Who sung like others of her kind, 
Hearing a well-taught Linnet’s Airs, 
Had other matters in her mind, 
To imitate him she prepares. 
Her Fancy strait was on the Wing: 
I fly, quoth she, 
As well as he; 
T don’t know why 
TI should not try 
As well as he to sing. 
From that day forth she chang’d her Throat: 
She did, as learned Women do, 
Till every thing 
That heard her sing 
Wou’d run away from her — as I from you. 


In Charles Gildon’s Comparison between the Two Stages 
(1702) we have a discussion by two gentlemen, Rambler and 
Sullen, and a critic, Chagrin, as to the comparative merits of 
Drury Lane and Lincoln’s Inn Fields. The most important 
reference to women playwrights is in the following passage: 


Rambler. Proceed to the next. 

Sullen. “The Lost Lover, or, The Jealous Husband.” 

Rambler. I never heard of that. 

Sullen. Oh this is a Lady’s! : 

Crit. How’s that? — Audetg; viris contendere virgo? © 

Rambler. See how Critick starts at the naming a lady. 

Crit. What occasion had you to name a Lady in the confounded 
work you’re about? 

Sullen. Here’s a Play of hers. 

Crit. The Devil there is. I wonder in my heart we are so lost to all 


SATIRIC REPRESENTATIONS 389 


Sense and reason: What a Pox have the Women to do with the Muses? 
I grant you the Poets call the Nine Muses by the names of Women, 
but why so? not because the Sex had anything to do with Poetry, but 
because in that Sex they’re fitter for Prostitution. 

Rambler. Abusive, now you’re abusive Mr. Critick. 

Crit. Sir I tell you we are abus’d: I hate these Petticoat-Authors; 
*t is false Grammar, there’s no Feminine for the Latin word, ’t is en- 
tirely of the Masculine Gender, and the Language won’t bear sucha 
thing as a she-Author. 

Sullen. Come, come, you forget your self; you know ’t was a Lady 
earry’d the Prize of Poetry in France t’other day; and I assure you, if 
the Account were fairly stated, there have been in England some of 
that Sex who have done admirably. 

Crit. I’le hear no more on ’t: Come Sir, drink about. 

Rambler. To the Fair Author of The Fatal Friendship. 

Crit. Ay, come; away with it, anything that the Glass may go 


| ne 


In Farquhar’s The Inconstant (1703) one lady, named “Bi- 
sarre” because of her odd, capricious ways, illustrates Pope’s 
“Most women have no character at all,”’ so briskly does she 
change from “a starch’d piece of Austerity” to a pert madcap. 
As a prude she takes rank among the learned ladies. She has a 
grave, reverend air, and is dubbed “a Plato in Petticoats.” 
She wins the affections of Captain Duretete — a man socially 
hampered by a University education — when she talks to him 
in his own language. “The Forms that Logicians introduce,” 
she begins in pedantic tone, “and which proceed from simple 
Enumeration, are dubitable.” Duretete interrupts in an ec- 
stasy, “She’s mine, Man; she’s mine: My own Talent to a T. 
I'll match her in Dialectics, faith. I was seven Years at the 
University, Man, nurs’d up with Barbara, Celarunt, Darit, 
Ferio, Baralipton. Did you know that ’t was Metaphysics made 
mean Ass?” Bisarre is the only heroine whose learning wins 
her a husband. 

In Mrs. Centlivre’s The Basset Table (1705) the charming 
young Valeria has a lover whom she intends to marry, but she 
is too much occupied with scientific research to have any time 
for darts and flames and lover’s sighs. Fortunately Ensign 


390 THE LEARNED LADY 


cares so much for Valeria and her ducats that he is able to en- 
dure the tediousness of courtship in which laboratory experi- 
ments supersede passion. 


Ensign. ’T is true, that little She Philosopher has made me do Pen- 
ance more heartily than ever my Sins did; I deserve her by mere dint 
of Patience. I have stood whole Hours to hear her assert, that Fire 
cannot burn, nor Water drown, nor Pain afflict, and Forty ridiculous 
Systems... 

Sir Jam. And all her Experiments on Frogs, Fish, and Flies, ha, ha, 
without the least contradiction. 

Ensign. Contradiction, no, no, I allow’d all she said, with, un- 
doubtedly, Madam, —I am of your Mind, Madam, it must be so — 
Natural Causes, &c. 

Sir Jam. Ha, ha, ha, I think it is a supernatural Cause, which en- 
ables thee to go thro’ this Fatigue; if it were not to raise thy Fortune, 
I should think thee mad to pursue her. 


He cannot edge ina word of love so absorbed does she declare 
herself to be in observing the circulation of blood in a fish’s tail. 
Valeria is quite ahead of her time in her passion for dissection. 
She has devoted her pretty dove to the cause of research, and 
offers her jewels in return for her cousin’s fine Italian grey- 
hound, likewise to be used in her pursuit of anatomical secrets. 
When accused of cruelty she exclaims in quite a modern tone, 
“Can Animals, Insects, or Reptiles be put to a nobler use than 
to increase our Knowledge?” She loses her sailor lover by 
breaking in upon his sea lingo with a request that he should 
speak, “properly, positively, laconically, and naturally” and 
by deluging him with questions about mermaids and the in- 
habitants of the stars. He quickly determines that he does n’t 
regard a “‘ Philosophical Gimcrack the value of a cockle-shell,” 
and considers the lovely young Valeria as “fitter for Moor- 
fields than Matrimony.” She turns away from him with a sigh 
at the time wasted on a being so irrational as a suitor, and 
devotes herself again to the “immense Pleasures of dear, dear 
Philosophy.” 

Lady Reveller and her woman, Alphiew, sharply criticize 
Valeria for her unfeminine occupations. . 


SATIRIC REPRESENTATIONS 391 


LTady. Will you ever be weary of these Whimsies? 

Val. Whimsies! Natural Philosophy a Whimsy! Oh! the unlearned 
World. 

Lady. Ridiculous Learning! 

Alp. Ridiculous, indeed, for Women; Philosophy suits our Sex as 
Jack Boots would do. 

Val. Custom would bring them as much in Fashion as Furbeloes, 
and Practice would make us as valiant as e’er a Hero of them all; the 
Resolution is in the Mind — Nothing can enslave that. 

Lady. My Stars! this Girl will be mad, that’s certain. 

Val. Mad! so Nero banish’d Philosophers from Rome, and the first 
Discoverer of the Antipodes was condemn’d for a Heretic. 

Lady. In my Conscience, Alphiew, this pretty Creature’s spoil’d. 
Well, Cousin, might I advise, you should bestow your Fortune in 
founding a College for the Study of philosophy, where none but 
Women should be admitted; and to immortalize your Name, they 
should be called Valerians, ha, ha, ha. 

Val. What you make a jest of, I’d execute were Fortune in my 
Power. 


The heroine of Charles Johnson’s The Generous Husband 
(1711), Florida, is described as a “Pretender to Learning, a 
Philosophress.” She is young, beautiful and with a tolerable 
dower. But she is invincibly opposed to marriage. She gives 
caustic analyses of the lawyer, the courtier, the soldier, the 
country squire, proposed by her father with matrimonial in- 
tent. “I’ll not be married,” she says, “I’ll not submit myself 
to the uneven Temper of a Humourist; I’ll neither be a Prop to 
a Fool’s Fortune, nor a Bar to a Libertine’s Pleasure.’ “I hate 
Men, I hate the Cumber of a Family, everything concurs to 
discourage me, to make me fear it, to make it my Aversion. 
Study has nothing in it but what is serene and calm.”’ When her 
father urges the loss of her inheritance if she does not marry, 
her unmoved answer is, “I shall have still a good Book— 
which I am persuaded I shall love much better than a bad Hus- 
band — I’ll tell you, Sir, for these three Years that I have 
been acquainted with Aristotle, we have not had the least dif- 
ference together.” Various lovers present themselves. One of 
them says he trembles whenever he visits her because she puts 


392 THE LEARNED LADY 


him so in mind of his schoolmaster, but he determines to stand 
“a little Ear-bating before Marriage” — encouraged thereto 
by the lady’s money — with the hope of devising effective re- 
straints after marriage. Another bold lover ventures upon her 
in her study where she sits surrounded by books and mathe- 
matical instruments. He is disguised as a traveling Japanese 
philosopher, and she enters upon the conversation with a learned 
salutation — Vir Colendissime si tu illorum Eruditorum, but he 
begs her in the name of Dr. Bentley not to repudiate her “ver- 
nacular Idiom,” and the interview proceeds in the English 
tongue. All goes prosperously until the pseudo-philosopher 
speaks of love. She dismisses him with “What a terrible Sole- 
cism in good Manners has this Fellow committed — Nunquam 
minus solus quam cum solus; excellent Scipio —I admire that 
thought.” She yields to love only when the learned Mr. Dyp- 
thong, who has “corrected every Nod in Homer,” appears as 
a suitor. He has just escaped from the “Gothic Persecution of 
a sort of Animalcula call’d Punsters” and comes to her as an 
Oracle of Reason. This is the right approach and his victory is 
assured when he praises her noble easy Odes that Horace would 
not blush to own, her immortal Sonnet on Cato, her mastery of 
“both the Ethos and the Pathos.” She pays him in kind with 
honeyed compliments from the Muses and the Graces. They 
discuss the Cartesian system, and the Epicurean, the Peri- 
patetic and the Platonic Schools of Thought. The inhabitants 
of the moon come in for passing notice. The soul and the 
mind receive analysis. This sort of courtship suits her. *Tis 
thus a “Philosophress” should be wooed. She balks a little at 
the marriage articles, praying Mr. Grub to alter the savage 
style of them into something more genteel, at least in so far as 
to let the dates be “‘ Calendar and Ides”; the pounds and pence, 
‘““Sesterces and Talents.” But she yields the point on making 
the unhappy discovery that to be learned and polite in dower 
articles would be illegal, that the law demands tautology, ver- 
biage, an impertinent jargon. It is only when Mr. Dypthong is 
unmasked a villain that Florida becomes “sick of Letters,” lays 


SATIRIC REPRESENTATIONS 393 


aside the “Severity of Thought” along with her big folios, and 
accepts the paternal choice in the way of a husband. Her father, 
whose slightest remarks have received pitiless logical analysis 
from his daughter, who is urged to maintain silence or to speak 
“* positively — laconically — naturally,” whose arguments are 
met with classic quotations that are but as gibberish to his un- 
instructed ear, hands her over to a husband with a sigh of relief. 
His conclusion is, “ Wit in a Woman is like Mettle in a blind 
Mare.” The lover agrees that “a She-Understanding shou’d 
always be passive.” Learning, he says, may give a woman more 
Sail, but she’s sure to lack Ballast! 

In January, 1717, there appeared a farce at Drury Lane 
entitled Three Hours after Marriage. It was the joint work of 
Gay, Pope, and Arbuthnot, but the character of the learned 
lady, Phoebe Clinket,! was by Pope. Phoebe is not an important 
person in the plot. She was evidently drawn merely to carica- 
ture a learned lady, in this case an authoress. She comes upon 
the stage in an ink-stained dress with pens stuck in her hair. 
Her maid carries strapped to her back a desk on which Phoebe 
writes: 


Maid. Thad as good carry a raree-show about the street. Oh! how 
my back akes! 

Clink. What are the labors of the back to those of the brain? Thou 
scandal to the muses, I have now lost a thought worth a folio, by thy 
impertinence.? 

Maid. Have I not got a crick in my back already, that will make 
me good for nothing, with lifting your great books? 

Clink. Folio’s, call them, and not great books, thou monster of im- 
propriety. But have patience, and I will remember the three gallery- 
tickets I promis’d thee at my new Tragedy. 


1 See Winchilsea, Lady: Works (edited by Myra Reynolds), Introduction, 
pp. lxii-lxx, for full account of this character. 

2 This scene may refer both to Lady Winchilsea and the Duchess of New- 
castle. Cibber, in his Lives of the Poets, vol. u, p. 164, says: “ The Duchess kept 
a great many young ladies about her person, who occasionally wrote what she 
dictated. Some of them slept in a room contiguous to that in which her Grace 
lay, and ever ready, at the call of her bell to rise any hour of the night, to write 
down her conceptions, lest they should escape her memory.” 


394 THE LEARNED LADY 


Maid. I shall never get my head-cloathes clear-starch’d at this 
rate. 

Clink. 'Thou destroyer of learning, thou worse than a book-worm! 
Thou hast put me beyond all patience. Remember how my lyric ode 
bound about a tallow-candle; thy wrapping up snuff in an epigram; 
nay, the unworthy usage of my Hymn to Apollo, filthy creature! read 
me the last lines I wrote upon the Deluge, and take care to pronounce 
them as I taught you. 

Maid. (Reads with an affected tone.) 

Swell’d with a dropsy, sickly Nature lies, 
And melting in a diabetes, dies. 
Clink. Still without Cadence! 
Maid. 
Swell’d with a dropsy — 
Clink. Hold. I conceive... 
The roaring seas o’er the tall woods have broke, © 
And whales now perch upon the sturdy oak. 
Roaring? Stay. Rumbling, roaring, rustling. No; raging seas. 
(Writing.) 
The raging seas o’er the tall woods have broke, 
Now perch, thou whale, upon the sturdy oak. 
Sturdy oak? No; steady, strong, strapping, stiff. Stiff? No; stiff is too 
short. 
What feast for fish! Oh too luxurious treat! 
When hungry dolphins feed on butchers meat. 

Foss. Niece, why, niece, niece! Oh, Melpomene, thou goddess of 
tragedy, suspend thy influence for a moment, and suffer my niece to 
give me a rational answer. 


The main portion of the first act is devoted to a development 
of the satiric representation of an authoress, and the character 
is given special point by the fact that it was intended for Lady 
Winchilsea. Probably no woman of the time was more cruelly 
pilloried. Exactly why Pope chose to give so disagreeable a 
picture of her it would be difficult to say, but fortunately one 
is not obliged to give a reasonable basis for Pope’s satirical 
sketches. For the occasion it is sufficient to say that her dra- 
matic attempts were not to his taste, and that some obscure 
personal irritation led him to take the opportunity of this play 
to speak his mind. 


SATIRIC REPRESENTATIONS 395 


In minor points the character might be counted fairly appli- 
cable to Lady Winchilsea. Her learning, her devotion to literary 
pursuits, her fecundity in verse, her opposition to amatory 
themes, her detestation of the modern stage, are all character- 
istics that tally with the burlesque portrait. Lady Winchilsea 
was also very religious, and though herself maid of honor to 
Mary of Modena and so necessarily much in the corrupt Res- 
toration court, was even unnecessarily strict and severe on the 
subject of morals and manners. This prudishness was satirized 
by Phcebe Clinket’s boast that she is “unwilling to stand even 
on the brink of an indecorum,” as a result of which delicacy she 
has never allowed in her plays “the libertinism of lip-embraces,” 
and this in spite of the fact that Aristotle never actually pro- 
hibited kissing on the stage. But in the main points of Phcebe 
Clinket’s self-confidence and her determination to push her 
play at all hazards to the point of public presentation, there is 
no hint of a likeness to Lady Winchilsea, who was exceedingly 
modest and deprecatory about her work. She never willingly 
allowed her dramatic writings to pass beyond a small domestic 
and literary circle, nor out of her voluminous verse did any but 
a very small portion reach publication with her permission. 
Furthermore, the tragedy of The Universal Deluge attributed to 
Pheebe Clinket bears no resemblance to any extant work by 
Lady Winchilsea. 

Taken as a whole, quite apart from any personal application, 
Phoebe Clinket is the most detestable picture of a learned lady 
in any of the comedies. She is vain, boastful, and superficial; 
she is a pedant, a prude, and a hypocrite; and there are no 
Initigating traits. 

Colley Cibber put on his play The Refusal at Covent Garden 
in 1721 and published it the same year. It is a close version of 
Les Femmes Savantes, the rich, middle-class family of Sir Gil- 
bert Wrangle in Cibber’s play being the counterpart of the 
wealthy bourgeois family of Chrysal in Moliére. The action 
follows that of Moliére’s play, and Moliére gives the model for 
many of the important situations and conversations. Curll 


396 THE LEARNED LADY 


called The Refusal merely “a Sampler, whereon Monsieur 
Moliére’s Stitching may easily be perceived from Mr. Cibber’s 
canvas.” ! But Cibber’s play is a success in that it is a brilliant 
English adaptation of the French original. The two characters 
that represent learned ladies are Lady Wrangle and her daugh- 
ter Sophronia. 

Sir Gilbert thus describes his wife to Mr. Frankly: “She’s a 
great plague to me. Not but my lord bishop, her uncle, was 
a mighty good man; she lived all along with him; I took her 
upon his word; ’t was he made her a scholar; I thought her a 
miracle; before I had her I used to go and hear her talk Latin 
with him an hour together; and there I— I—I played the 
fool.” Throughout the play Sir Gilbert is very evidently a mem- 
ber of “‘the hen-pecked fraternity.”” Lady Wrangle has an im- 
portant place in but two scenes and in both of these she en- 


deavors to domineer over her husband. In the scene with the - 


maid he is completely cowed, and in the scene of the wedding 
contract he is triumphant only because of abundant friendly 
backing. Lady Wrangle’s quarrelsome, jealous disposition is 
perhaps more in evidence than her learning, but she has learn- 
ing too. She quotes Latin whenever possible and is herself an 
authoress. 

The famous scene in Moliére where the maid Martine is to be 
dismissed for her indifference to Vaugelas and the laws of gram- 
mar, becomes in Cibber a similar hurly-burly against the maid 
and the cook for having used a sheet of one of Lady Wrangle’s 
productions in which to wrap the roast. ‘The maid — “a brain- 
less ideat,” “a dunce,” “an illiterate monster,” “an eleventh 
plague of Egypt,” according to the energetic vituperation of her 
mistress — seeing the leaf to be blotted and blurred took it 
for waste paper. 

Blurred! you driveller! Was ever any piece perfect, that had not 
corrections, erasures, interlineations, and improvements! Does not 


the very original show, that when the mind is warmest, it is never 
satisfied with its words: 


1 Curll: No Fool like Wits, Prologue. 


SATIRIC REPRESENTATIONS 397 


Incipit et dubitat ; scribit, damnatque tabellas, 

Et notat, et delet ; mutat, culpatque probatque. 
The leaf in.question is a part of Lady Wrangle’s translation of 
the passion of Byblis. Her husband calls it the passion of Bib- 
ble-Babble, and says, “If a line on’t happens to be mislaid, 
she’s as mad as a blind mare that has lost her foal; she ll run 
her head against a stone-wall to recover it. All the use I find of 
her learning is, that it furnishes her more words to scold with.” 

Lady Wrangle’s creed as expressed to Charlotte is, “Refine 
your soul; give your happier hours up to science, arts, and let- 
ters; enjoy the raptures of philosophy, subdue your passions, 
and renounce the sensual commerce of mankind.” She, how- 
ever, claims Frankly as her lover, a virtuous and platonic one, 
to be sure, but so irrevocably hers as to preclude significant 
attentions to others. When she learns of his open love to Char- 
lotte — she exclaims, “‘I thought virtue, letters, and philosophy 
had only charms for him: I have known his soul all rapture in 
their praises.” And her indignation that he should “contami- 
nate his intellects with such a chit of an animal” changes her 
platonic love into the most jealous hate. Her philosophy as to 
the proper conduct of the passions has no influence on her 
actions. 

Sophronia is unlike her prototype Armande, in that Cibber 
converts her some time before the end of the play and she takes 
a husband with a delight equal to that of Charlotte herself. 
Sophronia was, on her father’s second marriage, when he was 
foolishly enamoured of Lady Wrangle’s Latin, put into the hands 
of the Bishop to be made by him into a second prodigy of learn- 
ing. She had also the advantage of being instructed by her 
stepmother in the doctrines of platonic love. Her learning, her 
- doctrine of the union of souls, her enthusiasm for poetry, all 
give an effect of genuineness. Her lover Granger understands 
her well. He grants her “half mad with learning and philoso- 
phy,” but still “‘a fool of parts and capable of thinking right.” 
Frankly had formerly made love to her in conventional fashion, 
but to him she had shown herself a marble-hearted lady, a 


398 THE LEARNED LADY 


proud and haughty prude. But Granger knows how to ap- 
proach her. He humors all her romantic notions, chimes in with 
allher raptures in the air, scouts all love that is but an affair of 
the veins and the arteries, exalts only the sexless union of har- 
monious minds and souls, quotes Latin, declaims blank verse, 
makes slow and delicate and utterly submissive and reluctant 
approaches to so mundane a thought as marriage, and finally 
she falls a victim to blandishments so adroitly mingled. Gran- 
ger’s words, like Hybla drops, distil upon her sense; faint phi- 
losophy deserts her; and “like a wounded dove” she “trem- 
bling hovers to her mate for succour” in the most approved 
romantic style. When her stepmother says accusingly, “What 
then becomes of your Platonic system?” she answers, “Dis- 
solved, evaporated, impracticable, and fallacious all: you’llown 
I have labour’d in the experiment, but found at last, that to try 
gold in a crucible of virgin-wax was a mere female folly.” And 
she closes the play with 

In vain, against the force of nature’s law, 

Would rigid morals keep our hearts in awe; 

All our lost labours of the brain but prove, 

Tn life there’s no philosophy like love. 
The characters of Lady Wrangle and Sophronia with their affec- 
tations and useless learning are emphasized by the natural, sen- 
sible Charlotte who serves as a foil. She is a gay, laughing, 
wheedling, fascinating little rogue with a quick wit, and a 
genius for common sense. She cannot believe that a soul was 
crammed into a body just to spoil sport and she gives her whole 
nature free play. She loves Mr. Frankly and says so, and she 
avows her preference for marriage as against philosophical mys- 
teries. Her praises are recited by Mr. Frankly in the words, 
** As she does not read Aristotle, Plato, Plutarch, or Seneca, she 
is neither romantic nor vain of her pedantry; and as her learn- 
ing never went higher than Bickerstaff’s Letters, her manners 
are consequently natural, modest and agreeable.” 

In Bickerstaff’s Lionel and Clarissa (1768), Sir John Flower- 

dew seems quite in advance of his age in securing a tutor for his 


SATIRIC REPRESENTATIONS 399 


daughter and in considering “a little knowledge” necessary 
fora woman. “I am far,” he says, “from considering ignorance 
as a desirable characteristic; when intelligence is not attended 
with impertinent affectation, it teaches them [women] to judge 
with precision, and gives them a degree of solidity necessary 
for the companion of a sensible man.” This, however, is a cool 
statement of theory. When his daughter outwits him and 
marries the tutor, he has a violent reaction in favor of the 
straitest training a maid can have: 


Girls like squirrels oft appear, 
Tn their cages, pleased with flav’ry, 
But, in fact, ’t is all but knav’ry; 
Less thro’ love than out of fear: 
Only on their tricks relying, 
Let them out, their hands untying, 
And You'll see the matter plain. 
Once there’s naught their flight to hamper, 
Presto — whisk-away they scamper; 
Never to return again. 
Wou’d you manage lasses rightly, 
You must watch them daily, nightly, 
Shut them close, and hold them tightly; 
Never loose an inch of chain: 
Freedom, run-aways will make ’em, 
And the devil can’t o’ertake ’em. 


Except for Lionel and Clarissa there were after Cibber’s Re- 
fusal few representations of the learned lady as a comic type, 
until after the revival of the comedy of manners under Sheri- 
dan and Goldsmith. The sentimental comedy was occupied 
in rescuing super-sensitive, over-refined, delicate, tearful, and 
helpless heroines from the plots of abnormally dark villains, 
and in bestowing the prizes thus captured on the high-minded, 
self-conscious Sir Charles Grandisons who posed as heroes of 
the play. Comic types fell by the way until Goldsmith suc- 
ceeded in his knight-errantry in behalf of the goddess of fun, 
and routed sensibility, and sentimentality. And the learned 
ladies in the comedy after 1770 represent a new kind of learn- 


400 THE LEARNED LADY 


ing, and the ladies themselves are in many respects unlike their 
sisters of an earlier date. 


Il. Tue Novet-Reapine Girt As A Comic Type 


The learned-lady theme had an interesting variant in the 
novel-reading girl. This type, as it appeared in comedy and 
fiction, is also of French origin. It finds its direct ancestry in 
Moliére’s Les Précieuses (1659), a satiric representation of the 
vogue of the French romances, most of which appeared in the 
twenty-five years before Les Précieuses.! 

Along with the vogue of the romances came the critical com- 
ment. Scarron’s Roman Comique (1651) burlesqued La Calpre- 
néde. Boileau’s Héros de Romans (1664) and L’ Art Poétique 
(1674) satirized especially the romances of Scudéry. The two 
satires that showed the effect of the romances on the minds of 
young girls were Moliére’s Les Précieuses and later Furetiére’s 
Roman Bourgeois (1666). 

These romances and satires were almost as well known in the 
original to cultivated Englishmen as they were to Frenchmen. 
There were also numerous translations. Between 1647 and 1660 
Polexandre, Cassandre, Ibrahim, Arteméne, Clélie, Almahide, 
Cléopdtre, all appeared in English versions, and some of them 
several times. And the satires were also promptly translated. 
There is no better illustration of the general English familiarity 
with those romances than that furnished by the letters Dorothy 
Osborne wrote to Sir William Temple in 1652-54. The Hotel de 
Rambouillet coterie itself could hardly have been more nearly 
letter perfect in the details than was this young English lady. 
Her reading becomes so absorbing that her grave lover finds it 
necessary to caution her against the “late hours” reported to 


1 Seigneur de Gomberville brought out his Polexandre in four volumes, 
quarto, in 1632. More famous were La Calprenéde’s romances, Cléopdtre, Cas- 
sandre, and Pharamond, and the works of the Scudéry brother and sister 
(the sister being the chief writer) who wrote Ibrahim, Arteméne, Clélie, and 
Almahide. All of these except Polerandre were published and some of them 
republished in France between 1641 and 1661. Their interminable length may 
be illustrated by Arteméne which was in ten volumes, a total of 6679 pages. 


SATIRIC REPRESENTATIONS 401 


him. She is penitent, but her enthusiasm is unabated. Parts of 
Cléopdtre, she says, pleased her more than anything she had 
ever read in her life. She confesses that she cried an hour to- 
gether over the sad story of Almanzor, and was so angry with 
Alcidiana that she could never love her after. But she is no un- 
critical admirer of the heroes and heroines. Her sense of humor 
does not forsake her. She laughs at L’ Amant Jalouz, in Cyrus, as 
one who seeks his own vexation, and L’ Amant mon Aimé was 
“an ass.” Sir William’s interest in the romances is hardly less 
than Dorothy’s. She sends him the separate volumes as she 
completes them, and there is a lively interchange of impressions 
and comments on various characters and situations. 

After the Restoration the fondness for romances may have 
been somewhat lessened by the new passion for the theater. But 
romance-readers were still numerous. Pepys tells us that his 
wife sat up till twelve over the Grand Cyrus. Again he says, “I 
find my wife troubled at my checking her last night in a coach 
in her long stories out of the Grand Cyrus which she would tell, 
though nothing to the purpose, nor in any good manner.” _How- 
ever, he must have repented of his rigor, for we find him later 
calling at Martin’s his book-seller’s, where he bought Cassandre 
and some other French books for his wife’s closet. And Mr. 
Pepys himself confesses to at least one Sunday devoted to 
French romances.” 

That Mr. and Mrs. Pepys were not alone in their tastes is 
made evident by contemporary arraignment of the romances as 
harmful influences. Mr. Pepys records a conversation with a 
Mr. Wilson who protested passionately against them as pervert- 
ers of history. The Ladies’ Calling (1673) brings the matter 
home to daily life: 

There is another thing to which some devote a very considerable 


part of their time, and that is the reading Romances, which seems 
now to be thought the peculiar and only becoming study of young 


1 Letters from Dorothy Osborne to Sir William Temple, passim. 
2 Pepys: Diary, Dec. 7, 1660; Feb. 10, 1661; May 12, 1666; Nov. 16, 1668: 
May 5, 1669. 


402 THE LEARNED LADY 


ladies. JL confess their youth may a little adapt it to them when they 
were Children, and I wish they were always in their event as harm- 
less; but I fear they often leave ill impressions behind them. Those 
amorous passions which ’t is their design to paint to the utmost life 
are apt to insinuate themselves into their unwary Readers, and by an 
unhappy inversion a Copy shall produce an Original. When a poor 
young Creature shall read there of some triumphant Beauty, that has 
I know not how many captiv’d Knights prostrate at her feet, she will 
probably be tempted to think it a fine thing; and may reflect how 
much she loses time, that has not yet subdued one heart; and then her 
business will be to spread her nets, lay her toils to catch somebody 
who will more fatally ensnare her. And when she has once worried 
herself into an amour, those authors are subtil Casuists for all difficult 
cases that may occur in it, will instruct in the necessary artifices of 
deluding parents and friends, and put her ruin perfectly in her own 
power. And truly this seems to be so natural a consequent of this sort 
of study, that of all the divertisements that look so innocently, they 
can scarce fall upon any more hazardous. Indeed ’t is very difficult 
to imagine what mischief is done to the world by the false notions and 
images of things: particularly of Love and Honour, those noblest con- 
cerns of human life, represented in these mirrors.! 


The popularity of the French romances and the protests they 
aroused would naturally make the romance-loving girl a type 
of genuine social interest, and it is surprising that this element 
of Moliére’s Les Précieuses was not sooner taken up in English 
comedy. There were, to be sure, occasional references to ro- 
mance-reading something in the style of Moliére. In Shad- 
well’s Bury-Fair (1689), for instance, Gertrude is apparently 
familiar “with Romances and Love and Honour Plays,” and 
she complains that all the lovers talk so in the style of the ro- 
mances that a girl knows in advance just what compliments 
she must listen to.2, And in Wright’s Female Vertuosos (1693) 
Sir Maurice says, “‘O’ my Conscience, Women’s Heads, now-a- 
days, are so stuff’t up with their Trash of Romances and Poetry, 
that there is no Room left in ’em for Reason, or Common 
Sense.” Later he bewails his fate more bitterly: “This Plague 
of Wit has infected all my Servants, even my little Boy, for- 


1 The Ladies’ Calling, part 11, section 11. 
_ 2 Shadwell, Thomas: Bury-Fair, Act 111, Sc. 1. 


SATIRIC REPRESENTATIONS 403 


sooth, can not turn the Spit now without a Pharamond or a Cas- 
sandra in his hand.” But it was not till Steele’s Tender Husband 
in 1705 that the romance-reading girl appeared in England as a 
developed type. Steele’s Biddy Tipkin ! is nearly half a cen- 
tury later than Moliére’s Madelon and Cathos, but they are 
her unquestioned ancestors. 

In Moliére’s play the two country girls endeavor to apply to 
real life the ideas they have gained from the romances. Gorgi- 
bus, the father of Madelon and uncle of Cathos, is a worthy 
citizen whose common-sense views of life subject him to the 
scornful raillery of the young ladies. He endeavors to provide 
them with good husbands, but his straightforward methods 
shock their romance-tutored minds. To be greeted at the first 
interview with marriage proposals is a crude and coarse pro- 
ceeding. If Cyrus had married Mandane, and Clélie had mar- 
ried Aronce at once, what would have become of Mademoiselle 
de Scudéry’s romances Arteméne and Clélie? The dull Gorgibus, 
and the lovers he has brought are hopelessly ignorant of le carte 
de Tendre, ignorant of the regions known as Billets-doux, Petits- 
soins, Billets-galants, Jolis-vers, and the other exactly marked 
stages of a well-wrought courtship. The young ladies even 
doubt the reality of their relationship to Gorgibus, and they re- 
ject the names Cathos and Madelon in favor of Polixéne and 
Aminte. Gorgibus attributes all their vagaries to the reading of 
romances, and in the climax of his irritation exclaims to the 
stock of offending volumes, “ Et vous, qui étes cause de leur folie, 
sottes billeveseés, pernicieux amusements des esprits oisifs, romans, 
vers, chansons, sonnets et sonneties, puissiez-vous étre a tous les 
diables!” 

The fundamental idea and many of the satiric details in the 
presentation of Biddy Tipkin in Steele’s The Tender Husband 
exactly follow the French model. Biddy’s reading is identical 
with that of Madelon and Cathos, but wider in scope. She re- 
fers familiarly to passages or characters in Cléopdtre, Cassandre, 
Pharamond, Ibrahim, Arteméne, Clélie, and Almahide, showing 

1 Steele, Richard: The Tender Husband; or, The Accomplished Fools (1705). 


404 THE LEARNED LADY 


that she had practically covered the field of romance. She is an 
heiress under the charge of her uncle, Hezekiah Tipkin, a banker 
of Lombard Street, and his sister, “an antiquated virgin with a 
mighty affectation for youth.” Pounce, a lawyer on the look- 
out for a rich match for his client, the impecunious Captain 
Cleremont, describes Biddy thus: “ Well then, since we may be 
free, you must understand, the young lady, by being kept from 
the world, has made a world of her own. She has spent all her 
solitude in reading romances, her head is full of shepherds, 
knights, flowery meads, groves, and streams, so that if you talk 
like a man of this world to her, you do nothing.” But Clere- 
mont, quite equal to the situation, responds, “Oh, let me 
alone —I have been a great traveller in fairy-land myself, I 
know Oroondates; Cassandra, Astreea, and Clelia are my inti- 
mate acquaintance.” Pounce predicts success for the fluent 
Captain, but there are other plans for Biddy. Her guardians 
wish her to marry her cousin, Humphry Gubbin, a country 
lout, familiarly known as “Numps.” Her attitude towards him 
and towards her prosaic aunt appears in the following con- 
versation: 

Niece. Was it not my gallant that whistled so charmingly in the 
parlour before he went out this morning? He’s a most accomplished 
cavalier. 

Aunt. Come, niece, come; you don’t do well to make sport with 
your relations, especially with a young gentleman that has so much 
kindness for you. 

Niece. Kindness for me! What a phrase is there to express the darts 
and flames, the sighs and languishings, of an expecting lover! 

Aunt. Pray, niece, forbear this idle trash, and talk like other peo- 
ple. Your cousin Humphry will be true and hearty in what he says, 
and that’s a great deal better than the talk and compliment of 
romances. 

Niece. Good madam, don’t wound my ears with such expressions; 
do you think I can ever love a man that’s true and hearty? What a 
peasant-like amour do these coarse words import! True and hearty! 
Pray, aunt, endeavour a little at the embellishment of your style. 

Aunt. Alack-a-day, cousin Biddy, these idle romances have quite 
turned your head. 

Niece. How often must I desire you, madam, to lay aside that fa- 


SATIRIC REPRESENTATIONS 405 


miliar name, cousin Biddy? I never hear it without blushing — Did 
you ever meet with a heroine in those idle romances, as you call ’em, 
that was termed Biddy? 

Aunt. Ah! cousin, cousin, these are mere vapours, indeed; nothing 
but vapours. 

Niece. No, the heroine has always something soft and engaging in 
her name; something that gives us a notion of the sweetness of her 
beauty and behaviour; a name that glides through half-a-dozen ten- 
der syllables, as Elismonda, Clidamira, Deidamia, that runs upon 
vowels off the tongue; not hissing through one’s teeth, or breaking 
them with consonants. *T is strange rudeness those familiar names 
they give us, when there is Aurelia, Sacharissa, Gloriana, for people 
of condition; and Celia, Chloris, Corinna, Mopsa, for their maids and 
those of lower rank. 

Aunt. Look ye, Biddy, this is not to be supported. I know not 
where you learned this nicety; but I can tell you, forsooth, as much as 
you despise it, your mother was a Bridget afore you, and an excellent 
house-wife. 

Niece. Good madam, don’t upbraid me with my mother Bridget, 
and an excellent house-wife. 

Aunt. Yes, I say she was; and spent her time in better learning than 
you ever did — not in reading of fights and battles of dwarfs and 
giants, but in writing out receipts for broths, possets, caudles, and 
surfeit-waters, as became a good country gentlewoman. 

Niece. My mother, and a Bridget! 

Aunt. Yes, niece, I say again, your mother, my sister, was a Brid- 
get! the daughter of her mother Margery, of her mother Sisly, of her 
mother Alice. 

Niece. Have you no mercy? Oh, the barbarous genealogy! 

Aunt. Of her mother Winifred, of her mother Joan. 

Niece. Since you will run on, then I must needs tell you I am not 
satisfied in the point of my nativity. Many an infant has been placed 
in a cottage with obscure parents, till by chance some ancient servant 
of the family has known it by its marks. 

Aunt. Ay, you had best be searched — That’s like your calling the 
winds the fanning gales, before I don’t know how much company; and 
the tree that was blown by it had, forsooth, a spirit imprisoned in the 
trunk of it. 

Niece. Ignorance! 

Aunt. Then a cloud this morning had a flying dragon in it. 

Niece. What eyes had you, that you could see nothing? For my part 
T look upon it to be a prodigy, and expect something extraordinary 
will happen to me before night... . But you have a gross relish of 


406 THE LEARNED LADY 


things. What noble descriptions in romances had been lost, if the 
writers had been persons of your gout? 

Aunt. I wish the authors had been hanged, and their books burnt, 
before you had seen ’em. 

Niece. Simplicity! 

Aunt. A parcel of improbable lies. 

Niece. Indeed, madam, your raillery is coarse — 

Aunt. Fit only to corrupt young girls, and fill their heads with a 
thousand foolish dreams of I don’t know what. 

Niece. Nay, now, madam, you grow extravagant. 

Aunt. What I say is not to vex, but advise you for your good. 

Niece. What, to burn Philocles, Artaxeres, Oroondates, and the 
rest of the heroic lovers, and take my country booby, cousin Hum- 
phry, for a husband! 

Aunt. Oh dear, oh dear, Biddy! Pray, good dear, learn to act and 
speak like the rest of the world; come, come, you shall marry your 
cousin and live comfortably. 

Niece. Live comfortably! What kind of life is that? A great heiress 
live comfortably! Pray, aunt, learn to raise your ideas — What is, I 
wonder, to live comfortably? 

Aunt. To live comfortably is to live with prudence and frugality, 
as we do in Lombard Street. 


By mere force of contrast the way is open for the smooth- 
tongued Mr. Cleremont. He meets the ladies in the park with 
such phrases as “‘the cool breath of the morning,” “the season 
of pearly dews and gentle zephyrs,” and Biddy is enraptured. 
After the adroit withdrawal of the aunt by Pounce, Cleremont 
well maintains with Biddy his reputation as a traveler in fairy- 
land, and assumes likewise the military prowess without which 
no romance hero was complete. He soon cleverly turns the con- 
versation to a proposal of marriage, but Biddy understands the 
laws of romance too well to yield immediately. They part in 
the true spirit of Cassandre. 

Cler. We enjoy here, madam, all the pretty landscapes of the coun- 
try without the pains of going thither. 

Niece. Art and nature are in a rivalry, or rather a confederacy, to 
adorn this beauteous park with all the agreeable variety of water, 
shade, walks, and air. What can be more charming than these flowery 


lawns? 
Cler. Or these gloomy shades — 


SATIRIC REPRESENTATIONS 407 


Niece. Or these embroidered valleys — 

Cler. Or that transparent stream — 

Niece. Or these bowing branches on the banks of it, that seem to 
admire their own beauty in the crystal mirror? 

Cler. I am surprised, madam, at the delicacy of your phrase. Can 
such expressions come from Lombard Street? 

Niece. Alas, sir! what can be expected from an innocent virgin that 
has been immured almost one-and-twenty years from the conversa- 
tion of mankind, under the care of an Urganda ! of an aunt? 

Cler. Bless me, madam, how have you been abused! Many a lady 
before your age has had an hundred lances broken in her service, and 
as many dragons cut to pieces in honour of her. 

Niece. Oh, the charming man! [Aside.] 

Cler. Do you believe Pamela was one-and-twenty before she knew 
Musidorus? ? 

Niece. I could hear him ever. [Aside.] 

Cler. A lady of your wit and beauty might have given occasion for 
a whole romance in folio before that age. 

Niece. Oh, the powers! Who can he be? — Oh, youth unknown — 
But let me, in the first place, know whom I talk to, for, sir, I am 
wholly unacquainted both with your person and your history. You 
seem, indeed, by your deportment, and the distinguishing mark of 
your bravery which you bear, to have been in a conflict. May I not 
know what cruel beauty obliged you to such adventures till she pitied 
you? 

Cler. Oh, the pretty coxcomb! [Aszde.]— Oh, Blenheim, Blen- 
heim! Oh, Cordelia, Cordelia! 

Niece. You mention the place of battle. I would fain hear an exact 
description of it. Our public papers are so defective; they don’t so 
much as tell us how the sun rose on that glorious day — Were there 
not a great many flights of vultures before the battle began? 

Cler. Oh, madam, they have eaten up half my acquaintance. 

Niece. Certainly never birds of prey were so feasted; by report, 
they might have lived half-a-year on the very legs and arms our 
troops left behind ’em. 

Cler. Had we not fought near a wood we should never have got legs 
enough to have come home upon. The joiner of the Foot Guards has 
made his fortune by it. 

Niece. I shall never forgive your General. He has put all my an- 


1 Urganda was an enchantress in the Amadis and Palmerin romances. 
2 Musidorus, in Sir P. Sidney’s Arcadia, is the Prince of Thessaly, and in 
love with Pamela. 


408 THE LEARNED LADY 


cient heroes out of countenance; he has pulled down Cyrus and Alex- 
ander, as much as Louis-le-Grand — But your own part in that ac- 
tion? 

Cler. Only that slight hurt, for the astrologer said at my nativity, 
nor fire, nor sword, nor pike, nor musket shall destroy this child, let 
him but avoid fair eyes — But, madam, may n’t I crave the name 
of her that has so captivated my heart? 

Niece. I can’t guess whom you mean by that description; but if you 
ask my name, I must confess you put me upon revealing what I al- 
ways keep as the greatest secret I have — for would you believe it, 
they have called me — I don’t know how to own it, but they have 
called me — Bridget. 

Cler. Bridget? 

Niece. Bridget. 

Cler. Bridget? 

Niece. Spare my confusion, I beseech you, sir; and if you have occa- 
sion to mention me, let it be by Parthenissa,! for that’s the name I 
have assumed ever since I came to years of discretion. 

Cler. The insupportable tyranny of parents, to fix names on help- 
less infants which they must blush at all their lives after! I don’t 
think there’s a surname in the world to match it. 

Niece. No! What do you think of Tipkin? 

Cler. Tipkin! Why, I think if I was a young lady that had it I’d 
part with it immediately. 

Niece. Pray, how would you get rid of it? 

Cler. I’d change it for another. I could recommend to you three 
very pretty syllables — What do you think of Cleremont? 

Niece. Cleremont! Cleremont! Very well — but what right have I 
to it? 

Cler. If you will give me leave, I’ll put you in possession of it. By 
a very few words I can make it over to you, and your children after 
you. 

Niece. O fie! Whither are you running? You know a lover should 
sigh in private, and languish whole years before he reveals his passion; 
he should retire into some solitary grove, and make the woods and 
wild beasts his confidants. You should have told it to the echo half-a- 
year before you had discovered it, even to my handmaid. 

Cler. What can a lover do, madam, now the race of giants is ex- 
tinct? Had I lived in those days there had not been a mortal six foot 
high, but should have owned Parthenissa for the paragon of beauty, 


1 Parthenissa was the heroine of a romance of that name by Roger Boyle, 
Earl of Orrery, the first two parts of which appeared in 1651. 


SATIRIC REPRESENTATIONS 409 


or measured his length on the ground — Parthenissa should have 
been heard by the brooks and deserts at midnight, the echo’s burden 
and the river’s murmur. 

Niece. That had been a golden age, indeed! But see, my aunt has 
left her grave companion and is coming toward us — I command you 
to leave me. 

Cler. Thus Oroondates, when Statira! dismissed him her pres- 
ence, threw himself at her feet, and implored permission but to live. 

[Offering to kneel.] 

Niece. And thus Statira raised him from the earth, permitting him 


to live and love. 


But Biddy has not the cold constitution of the romance hero- 
ines and she presently acknowledges that she finds in herself all 
the symptoms of a raging amour. “I love solitude,” she solilo- 
quizes, “I grow pale, I sigh frequently. I call upon the name of 
Cleremont when I don’t think of it — His person is ever in my 
eyes, and his voice in my ears — Methinks I long to lose my- 
self in some pensive grove, or to hang over the head of some 
warbling fountain, with a lute in my hand, softening the mur- 
murs of the waters.”’ And in spite of her reluctance to abridge 
courtship and so shut off “all further decoration of disguise, 
serenade and adventure,” she finally consents to an immediate 
elopement, declaring that if Oroondates had been as pressing 
as Cleremont Cassandra would have been but a pocket-book. 

Biddy, her aunt, and her two suitors, form the most delight- 
ful group of characters in the comedy of manners before Gold- 
smith and Sheridan. And Biddy can hold her own against any 
of the heroines except Congreve’s Millamant. Nance Oldfield 
created the character in 1705 and it continued to be a favorite 
on the stage. The play was given several times nearly every 
year to 1736 and occasionally afterwards, so that the character 
of Biddy was one often before the public. 

There are also other indications that the topic of romance- 
reading was one of continued interest. In 1748 there appeared 


1 Statira, in Cassandra, was the widow of Alexander the Great, and the 
daughter of Darius. She married Oroondates after many difficulties had been 
overcome. 


410 THE LEARNED LADY | 


the second edition of an anonymous work entitled The Lady’s 
Drawing-Room. Being a Faithful Picture of the Great World. 
One chapter entitled “The Adventures of Marilla” presents a 
character following in the wake of “Biddy Tipkin” and ante- 
dating the Female Quixote by perhaps a decade: 


Maria was a young Lady, who, from her most early years, dis- 
cover’d an uncommon Capacity, and, as she grew up, made a wonder- 
ful Progress, not only in those Accomplishments usually allowed to 
her own Sex, but also in some of those which more properly appertain 
to ours. While a Child herself, she despis’d all childish Diversions, 
and, as she was not a Companion for those of riper Years, instead of 
playing with those of her own, she amus’d herself with Reading, in 
which she took such an infinite Delight, that, for a Book she had never 
seen before, she would forego any other Satisfaction could’ be offer’d 
her; and, tho’ any one who had been present when she was thus em- 
ploy’d, and saw with what Swiftness her Eye pass’d from the Top of 
every Page to the Bottom, would have thought it impossible for her to 
receive much Advantage from the Contents, yet was her Apprehen- 
sion so acute, and her Memory so retentive, that whatever she look’d 
over in this Manner was as much her own, as if she had been the au- 
thor of it. — What could be more amazing than to hear a Girl, of ten 
or eleven Years of Age, quote Passages from Pliny, Livy, and Sallust, 
talk of the Policies of Princes, compare their several Interests, and 
the Motives on which War and Peace were made, and make such Ob- 
servations on them as could rarely be contradicted! What might not 
have been expected from such a Genius when Time had ripen’t it to 
Perfection? — She had also strong Notions of Philosophy, Morality, 
and Divinity, and had only such Books, as tended to the Improve- 
ment of her Mind, been thrown in her Way, she had doubtless made 
one of the most shining Characters that any Age or Nation has pro- 
duced; but unhappily, she was likewise too well acquainted with Cas- 
sandra, Cleopatra, Grand Cyrus, Pharamond, and other fabulous 
Treatises, which poison’d her Way of Thinking, and gave her a certain 
Bent of Mind, to which she ow’d all the Misfortunes of her future 
Life. Indeed, I think, there cannot be any Thing more pernicious to 
Youth, than the suffering them to read those idle and voluminous 
Adventures, which have no Foundation either in Truth, or good Sense, 
and I heartily wish, for the Sake not only of the young Lady I am 
speaking of, but of many others whose Reason has been perverted by 
them, tho’ perhaps not in an equal Degree, that the Government 
would forbid all such Books from being sold or printed. . . . Marilla 
was always obliging, and affable to every Body, but those who, as I 


SATIRIC REPRESENTATIONS 411 


said before, declared themselves her Lovers; now was this owing to 
either the Insensibility of her Heart, or to an Imagination, that all 
who address’d her were unworthy to do so, but to those romantick 
Notions she had imbib’d, by reading in what Manner the fictitious 
Ladies of Antiquity had behav’d. She has often, since Time and a 
melancholy Experience of the World, has mortify’d this Foible, con- 
fess’d, That at that Time, she thought it the most audacious and pre- 
suming Thing in the World for a Man, to make any publick Declara- 
tion of his Passion, ’till he had suffer’d the Pangs of it, in secret, for 
three or four Years. — That, even then, he ought not to do it, unless 
Fortune had presented him with the Opportunity of ushering it in by 
some extraordinary Service, and that, whenever he express’d himself 
on that Head, it should be in such ambiguous Terms, and with so 
much Timidity, that it should rather be from his alter’d Countenance, 
and despairing Air The Object of his Affections should perceive he 
lov’d ‘her, than by any Words he could be able to speak. — Then, as 
to her own Part in this Farce, it seem’d to her the utmost Indecency 
in a Woman to listen to any amorous Proposals, ’till the Lover had 
griev’d himself to a Skeleton, and was on the Point of falling on his 
own Sword; nor, when he had arriv’d at that Pitch of Desperation, 
was she to vouchsafe him any greater Favour than a Command to 
live. — That, after seven Years, she might, tho’ with an infinite Shew 
of Reluctance, allow him to kiss her Hand, confess she pity’d him, 
but no more; — And, if he persevered a second Apprenticeship in the 
same Manner, perhaps, that is, if she found none more worthy, reward 
his faithful Service, by giving herself to him. 

These, she acknowledged, were the Ideas she had of Love and 
Courtship; but, none of her Admirers acting in any Degree answer- 
able to them, she look’d on all the Professions of Love made to her, as 
so many Affronts, and return’d them only with picquant Repartees, 
or sullen Silence. 


In 1752 Mrs. Charlotte Lennox, in The Female Quixote, gave 
an even more detailed picture of a girl obsessed by romances. 
Arabella was left motherless when very young, and her father 
lived in retirement with her on a vast estate in a remote prov- 
ince. She was very beautiful, and she was trained under the 
best masters in dancing, French, and Italian. But this excel- 
lent education had less influence on Arabella than the great 
store of French romances left by her mother who had bought 
them to relieve the tedium of life in the lonely castle. Suppos- 


412 _ THE LEARNED LADY 


ing these romances to be pictures of real life, Arabella founded 
all her notions and expectations on them. She was on the alert 
for love adventures, and she misinterpreted the most ordinary 
actions or phrases into some romantic possibility. Arabella had 
a good mind, lively wit, a sweet temper, a thousand amiable 
qualities, but her romantic notions permeated her thoughts 
and feelings till she became involved in constant absurdities. 
Generosity, courage, virtue, love, were of value to her only as 
interpreted by the romances. Her lover, a courteous, frank, 
handsome man of the ordinary world, found all his attractions 
clouded over when he unfortunately fell asleep over some chap- 
ters in the romances especially selected for his admiration and 
imitation. 

Mrs. Lennox’s story satirizes nearly all the salient character- 
istics of the French romances. She burlesques their length and 
the ever-recurring histories, adventures, episodes. The romance 
conception of courtship and marriage, the lady’s power of life 
and death over her lover, the exaggerated military prowess of 
the lover, the emphasis on unknown but illustrious birth, the 
bombastic language, the use of disguises, abductions, banish- 
ments, the long, argumentative conversations, the odd romance 
letters with high-flown superscriptions and signatures, and 
florid, stilted style, the romantic falsification of history, are 
some of the many elements clearly portrayed by Mrs. Lennox. 
But in spite of the minute accuracy of her work, Mrs. Lennox’s 
Arabella yields in definiteness of impression as well as in verac- 
ity and charm to Biddy Tipkin. 

Shortly after The Female Quixote came a little poem by Mrs. 
Monk entitled “On a Romantick Lady” in which a lover says 
to his mistress: 


This poring over your Grand Cyrus 
Must ruin you, and will quite tire us. 

It makes you think, that an affront ’t is, 
Unless your lover ’s an Orontes, 

And courts you with a passion frantick, 
In manner and in stile romantick. 


SATIRIC REPRESENTATIONS 413 


Now tho’ I count myself no Zero, 

I don’t pretend to be an hero. 

Or a by-blow of him that thunders, 
Nor are you one of the sev’n wonders. 
But a young damser very pretty, 
And your true name is Mistress Betty. 


With Mrs. Lennox and Mrs. Monk we seem to come to the 
end of the satire on the romance-reading girls. But in 1756 
we find in Murphy’s Apprentice a young man, a Mr. Gargle, 
an apothecary’s apprentice, whose wits have gone astray 
through reading romances. “An absurd, ridiculous, a silly 
empty-headed coxcomb,” exclaims his exasperated father, 
“with his Cassanders and his Cloppatras, and his trumpery; 
with his Romances, and his damn’d plays and his Odyssey 
Popes, and a parcel of fellows not worth a groat!” Charlotte, 
Mr. Gargle’s innamorata, was “as innocent as water-gruel” 
before he taught her to read play-books; but she was not per- 
manently injured by them, for before she had read far her 
father locked her books away and confined her in her room. In 
the projected romantic escape Charlotte is all practicality and 
good sense, but Mr. Gargle demands rope-ladders, moonlight, 
emotions, attitudes, and poetical quotations, and so spoils all. 

But Mr. Gargle lags behind his generation. Romances were 
being rapidly replaced by the novel. Between 1740 and 1753 
Pamela, Joseph Andrews, Jonathan Wild, Clarissa Harlowe, 
Tom Jones, Amelia, and Sir Charles Grandison had estab- 
lished the new species. And the romance-reading girl speedily 
gives way to the novel-reading girl. 

The first representative of this type comes in 1760 in George 
Colman’s Polly Honeycomb, at the very end of the period we 
are considering. In the Prologue Colman shows a clear recog- 
nition of the change of type. He says: 


Hither in days of yore, from Spain or France, 
Came a dread sorceress, her name RoMANCE. 
O’er Britain’s isle her wayward spell she cast, 
And common sense in magick chain bound fast. 


414 THE LEARNED LADY 


In mad sublime did each fond lover wooe, 
And in heroicks ran each billet-doux: 

High deeds of chivalry their sole delight, 
Each fair a maid distress’d, each swain a knight. 
Then might Statira Oroondates see, Fare 

At tilts and tournaments, arm’d cap-a-pie. 
She too, on milk-white palfrey, lance in hand, 
A dwarf to guard her, prane’d about the land. 
But now, the dear delight of later years, _ 

The younger sister of RoMANCE appears: 

Less solemn in her air, her drift the same, 

And Novet her enchanting, charming, name. 

RoMANCE might strike our grave forfathers’ pomp, 

But Novet for our buck and lively romp! 

Cassandra’s folios now no longer read, 

See, two neat pocket-volumes in their stead! 

And then so sentimental is the stile. 

So chaste, yet so bewitching all the while! 

Plot, and elopement, passion, rape, and rapture, 

The total sum of ev’ry dear — dear — Chapter. 

’T is not alone the small-talk and the smart, 

°T is Novet most beguiles the female heart. 

Miss reads—she melts—she sighs— Love steals upon her— 
And then — Alas, poor girl! — goodnight, poor honour! 


When Colman published the play he prefixed a list of one 
hundred and eighty-two novels which purports to be an “Ex- 
tract from the catalogue of one of our most popular circulating 
libraries; from which extract the reader may, without any great 
degree of shrewdness, strain the moral of this performance.” ! 


1 Chambers, in Traditions of Edinburgh (1869), says that Allan Ramsay in 
1725 set up “‘a circulating library, whence he diffused plays and other books of 
fiction among the people of Edinburgh. It appears from some private notes of 
the historian Wodrow that, in 1728, the magistrates, moved by some meddling 
spirits, took alarm at the effect of this kind of reading on the minds of youth, 
and made an attempt to put it down, but without effect.” 

The editor of Notes and Queries (4th Series, vol. 1x, p. 443) says, “We are in- 
clined to think the first circulating library in Scotland was in Dunfermline 
in 1711.” 

Scotland was ahead of England in the matter of circulating libraries. So far 
as I can discover, Newcastle-on-Tyne has the honor of starting the first circu- 
lating library in England. One Joseph Barber had ‘‘lent books on the High 


SATIRIC REPRESENTATIONS 415 


Of these books over one hundred are in the form of “Lives,” 
“Memoirs,” or “Adventures.”’ The list contains the principal 
novels of Richardson, Fielding, and Smollett, but the majority 


Bridge, at the other end of the Flesh Market, in 1746, and now, in 1757, at 
Amen Corner, near St. Nicholas’s Churchyard, he had 1257 volumes on loan. 
His was the ‘old original’ library of circulation.” In 1757 a rival appeared 
in the person of William Charnley who placed two thousand volumes at the 
command of subscribers at twelve shillings a year. (Notes and Queries, 5th 
Series, vol. vim, p. 155.) 

In 1751 a circulating library was opened in Birmingham by the famous 
William Hutton, who wrote in his Autobiography, “‘I was the first who opened 
a circulating library in Birmingham, in 1751, since which time many have en- 
tered the race.” He also said, “‘ As I hired out books the fair sex did not neglect 
my shop.” In 1750 there had been opened at Birmingham a book-club for the 
circulation of books among its members — “probably the oldest book-club in 
existence,” and still flourishing in 1877. The Manchester subscription library 
dates from 1765, or earlier. (Ibid., 5th Series, vol. vu, p. 452.) The circulating 
library of Liverpool was established May 1, 1758. The first catalogue is dated 
November 1, 1758. There were 109 subscribers at five shillings each, and 450 
volumes. The centenary of this library was celebrated May 13, 1858. (Ibid. 
5th Series, vol. vit, p. 354.) In January, 1761, Mr. Baker, book-seller of Tun- 
bridge Wells, lost his circulating library by fire. By 1770 there were circulating 
libraries at Settle, Rochdale, Exeter, and doubtless other places. In The An- 
nual Register (p. 207) for 1761 is an interesting note: ‘“‘ The reading female hires 
her novels from some country circulating library, which consists of about an 
hundred volumes,” which might very well apply to Polly Honeycomb. (Ibid. 
7th Series, vol. xu, p. 66.) 

When Franklin came to London in 1725 there was not a single circulating 
library in the metropolis. See Franklin’s Autobiography (vol. 1, p. 64), and in 
1697 the only library in London which approached the nature of a public lic 
brary was that of Zion College, belonging to the London clergy (Ellis’s Letters 
of Literary Men, p. 245). The exact date of the earliest London circulating li- 
brary I have not yet ascertained; but according to Southey (The Doctor, ed. 
Warter, 1848, p. 271) the first set up in London was about the middle of the 
eighteenth century by Samuel Fancourt. (Buckle: History of Civilization in 
England, vol. 1, p. 393.) Samuel Fancourt was a dissenting minister who went to 
London about 1730. A library conducted by him at a subscription of a guinea a 
year was dissolved, Michaelmas, 1745. Between 1746 and 1748 he issued an 
alphabetical catalogue of Books and Pamphlets belonging to the Circulating Ii- 
brary in Crane Court, in two volumes. In this “Gentlemen and Ladies’ Grow- 
ing and Circulating Library” the initial payment was a guinea and four shill- 
ings a year. A subscriber could draw one book and one pamphlet at a time. 
“He may keep them a reasonable time according to their bigness.” This li- 
brary contained between two and three thousand volumes, only about a tenth 
being light literature, and nearly half the total contents being on theology. 
(Dictionary of National Biography, under Faucoutrt.) 


416 THE LEARNED LADY 


of the books have passed into the limbo of the forgotten, if, in- 
deed, they ever existed. Polly gets her books from a circulating 
library in London, or purchases them from the bookseller, and 
she keeps up with the new books as they come out, but she does 
not mention any of the books in Colman’s list. The History of 
Sir George Truman and Emilia, The British Amazon, The Ad- 
ventures of Tom Ramble, The History of Dick Carless, History of 
Amelia, are the only novels she speaks of by the title. Her 
familiarity with novels in general is such that she merely refers 
to the characters in an offhand fashion. Nurse indicates the 
scope of Polly’s reading in ‘‘ Yes, yes, you are always reading 
your simple story-books. The Ventures of Jack this, the history 
of Betsey t’other, and Sir Humphreys, and women with hard 
Christian names.”! But Polly merely refers to Clarinda and to 
Julia, to Betsey Thompson, to Sally Wilkins, as girls who eloped 
because they had obstinate, ill-natured parents; to Bob Love- 
lace as a writer of charming letters; to poor Clarissa and ugly 
Mr. Soames; to Nancy Howe and Mr. Hickman; to poor Sophy 
Western as one locked up by an irate father; to Tom Jones, a 
foundling and yet a gentleman’s son. She means to marry 
Scribble, though they “‘go through as many distresses as Booth 
and Amelia.” She belabors Mr. Ledger with “I hate you; you 
are as deceitful as Blifil, as rude as the Harlowes, and as ugly 
as Dr. Slop.’’ After she has assailed this unwelcome suitor 
from Change-alley with “You are a vile book of Arithmetick, 
a table of pounds, shillings, and pence; you are uglier than a 
figure of eight, and more tiresome than the multiplication- 
table,” she rejoices over her successful vituperation. “Ha, ha, 
ha! there he goes! ha, ha, ha! I have out-topped them all; 
Miss Howe, Narcissa, Clarinda, Polly Barnes, Sophy Willis, and 
all of them. None of them ever treated an odious fellow with 
so much spirit. This would make an excellent chapter in a new 
Novel. But here comes papa; ina violent passion, no doubt. 
No matter: It will only furnish materials for the next chapter.” 


1 The Adventures of Jack Smart and The History of Miss Betsey Thoughiless 
are in Colman’s list. 


SATIRIC REPRESENTATIONS 417 


Though it is apparent that Polly was reading Richardson 
and Fielding, yet the book that held temporary ascendancy 
over her imagination was Sir George Truman. By a clever de- 
vice she is introduced reading the book and giving lively com- 
ments thereon: 


Polly. Well said, Sir George! Oh, the dear man. But so— “With 
these words the enraptur’d baronet [reading] concluded his declaration 
of love.” — So! — “But what heart can imagine, [reading] What 
tongue describe, or what pen delineate, the amiable confusion of Emi- 
lia?” — Well, now for it! — “Reader, if thou art a courtly reader, 
thou hast seen, at polite tables, iced cream crimsoned with rasp- 
berries; or, if thou art an uncourtly reader, thou hast seen the rosy- 
finger’d morning dawning in the golden East;” Dawning in the golden 
East! Very pretty. — “Thou hast seen, perhaps, [reading] the artifi- 
cial vermilion on the cheeks of Cleora, or the vermilion of nature on 
those of Sylvia; thou hast seen — in a word, the lovely face of Emilia 
was overspread with blushes.” This is a most beautiful passage, I 
protest! Well, a Novel for my money! — [reading] “‘Sir George touched 
at her confusion, gently seized her hand, and softly pressing it to his 
bosom [acting it as she reads] where the pulses of his heart beat quick, 
throbbing with tumultuous passion, in a plaintive tone of voice, 
breathed out, ‘Will you not answer me, Emilia?’”’ Tender creature! 
— “She, half raising [reading and acting] her downcast eyes, and half 
inclining her averted head, said in faltering accents, — yes, Sir!” Well, 
now! — “Then, gradually recovering, with ineffable sweetness she pre- 
pared to address him: when Mrs. Jenkinson bounced into the room, 
threw down a set of china in her hurry, and strewed the floor with por- 
celain fragments: Then turning Emilia round and round, whirled her 
out of the apartment in an instant, and struck Sir George dumb with 
astonishment at her appearance. She raved; but the baronet resum- 
ing his accustomed effrontery .. .”’ Novels, Nursee, novels! [exclaims 
Polly.] A novel is the only thing to teach a girl life, and the way of the 
world, and elegant fancies, and love, to the end of the chapter! . . . Do 
you think, Nursee, I should have had such a good notion of love so 
early, if I had not read novels? ... Oh, Nursee, a Novel is the only 
thing! .. . Lord, Nursee, if it was not for novels and love-letters a 
girl would have no use for her writing and reading. 


It is from her precious novels that the energetic young Polly 
has a head so fullof intrigues and contrivances. Rope-ladders 
or tied sheets and a feather-bed under the window, disguises, 


418 THE LEARNED LADY 


letters in lemon-juice, ink concealed in a pin-cushion, and paper 
and pens in a fan, all the devices of a thwarted amour, are as the 
alphabet of intrigue to Polly. No wonder the cautious Mr. 
Ledger finally withdraws his suit. ““She’d make a terrible wife 
for a sober citizen. Who can answer for her behaviour? I would 
not underwrite her for ninety per cent.”” Mr. Honeycomb at- 
tributes all Polly’s vagaries to “these damn’d story-books,” 
and concludes, “A man might as well turn his daughter loose in 
Covent-Garden, as trust the cultivation of her mind to A Ci- 
CULATING LIBRARY.” 

Lydia Languish in Sheridan ’s Rivals (1775) carries us beyond 
the limits of this study, but Lydia must be mentioned here be- 
cause she brings this topic to a natural chronological close and 
because of her relationship to the characters already noted. 
Judged from the point of view of the books selected, Biddy, 
Marilla, and Arabella belong to the romance-readers, as op- 
posed to Polly Honeycomb and Lydia Languish, the novel- 
readers. But the lists of Polly and Lydia are far from identical. 
Lydia is, indeed, quite up to date in her novels. Nine of the fif- 
teen she mentions were first published between 1768 and 1773.' 
And her reading is much less sensational and trashy than that 
of Polly. The bustling, executive Polly cannot for a moment be 
considered the real ancestor of Lydia. It ison Biddy Tipkin that 
Lydia is more nearly modeled. The points of similarity between 
The Tender Husband and The Rivals have often been noted, and 
it is in the Biddy and Lydia portion that this kinship is closest. 


1 The Reward of Constancy (possibly Shebeare’s The Happy Pair; or, Virtue 
and Constancy rewarded, 1771); The Fatal Connexion, by Mrs. Fogarty (1773); 
The Mistakes of the Heart, by Treyssac de Vergy (1769); The Delicate Distress 
(1769) and The Gordian Knot (1769), by Mrs. Griffith; The Memoirs of Lady 
Woodford (1771); Peregrine Pickle, by Smollett (1751); Tears of Sensibility, 
translated from French by John Murdock (1773); Humphrey Clinker, by Smol- 
lett (1771); Sentimental Journey, by Sterne (1768); Roderick Random, by Smol- 
lett (1748; eighth ed. 1770); The Innocent Adultery (translation of Scarron’s 
LT Adultére Innocente, in 1722-29 and with later editions); Lord Aimsworth 
(1773); The Man of Feeling, by Mackenzie (1771). For full comment on these 
books, and the others in Lydia’s list see Major Dramas of Richard Brinsley 
Sheridan (edited by George Henry Nettleton), Introduction, pp. Ixviii-lxxvii. 


SATIRIC REPRESENTATIONS 419 


Lydia with her two suitors and her aunt make up a group fun- 
damentally like the one of which Biddy is the center, though, 
of course, Biddy’s “‘Urganda of an aunt” is infinitely less amus- 
ing than “the old weather-beaten she-dragon,” Mrs. Malaprop, 
and Numps and Captain Cleremont are but faint forerunners of 
Bob Acres and Captain Absolute. But the original conception, 
the general relationship of these characters, their function in the 
play, are much the same. Biddy and Lydia are alike in occa- 
sional details and almost identical as type characters. And 
Lydia as a heroine given over to mischievous reading is like the 
other heroines in arousing in the harassed guardian or parent 
numerous protests against romances and novels. Mrs. Mala- 
prop and Sir Anthony Absolute sum up all that has been said 
in the earlier plays. Mrs. Malaprop would not have young 
women become “progenies” of learning, and her ideal maid 
who goes to school at nine to learn a “little ingenuity and ar- 
tifice,” “‘a supercilious knowledge of accounts,” with a little 
geography and reading, pretty well represents the amount of 
education the ordinary young girl was getting. And Sir An- 
thony protests against the inevitable evils consequent on 
teaching girls to read: 

All this is the natural consequence of teaching girls to read. HadTa 
thousand daughters, by Heavens! I’d as soon have them taught the 
black art as their alphabet! . . . Madam, a circulating library in a town 
is, as an evergreen tree, of diabolical knowledge... it blossoms 
through the year! 


SUMMARY 


In any attempt to trace a single line of thought or a social 
Material not tendency through a long and remote period the 
easily accessible difficult accessibility of the material must be 
premised. It is disheartening to note how many of the desired 
facts lurk in corners and byways, and are come upon almost by 
chance. A stray allusion followed up may lead to some rich 
little pocket of information, while laboriously conducted ex- 
plorations prove futile. It is the discovery of these pockets of 
ore that constitute the rewards of the adventure. But such — 
satisfaction is constantly clouded by a sense of the pockets that 
have been missed. Whatever discoveries reward the investiga- 
tor, there is always a tantalizing sense of having hardly more 
than passed the outlying boundaries of what might be found. 

Along with sins of omission it is regrettably certain that there 
must be sins of commission. In individual instances the discov- 
ery of further material might result in a somewhat different 
evaluation of the literary or historic significance of the person 
concerned. And certain it is that fuller records would reveal 
force and charm in many a woman presented now by but a 
meager array of unsuggestive biographical facts. 

A final difficulty results from a carelessness as to dates in 
contemporary records of the period studied, especially with 
regard to minor people, so that chronology is sometimes led into 
a dim and confused region of conjecture and approximation. 

Omission of important persons, mistakes in emphasis, an 
Women in occasional dubious chronology, are due in part 
literary biography to the general condition of literary biography 
till long after the middle of the eighteenth century. The details 
regarding men were often meager and inexact, but much more 
so was this the case with regard to women. When Ballard be- 
gan the preliminary studies for his memoirs of learned ladies he 


SUMMARY 421 


found the utmost difficulty in getting any reliable data. He 
refers to Leland, Bale, Pits, and Tanner as men whose works he 
had studied for general method. But from none of these could 
he get direct aid in his own field of research. Various records of 
Oxford and Cambridge could render but incidental service, 
Edward Philips’s Threatrum Poetarum (1675); John Aubrey’s 
Brief Lives (known as early as 1680); William Winstanley’s 
Lives of the most famous English Poets (1687); Gildon’s edition of 
Langbaine’s Dramatic Poets, with a second volume on Poets in 
1688, were somewhat more helpful. But in all these put to- 
gether there were only a few pages devoted to women. John 
Shirley’s Illustrious History of Women (1686) and Juncker’s 
Catalogue of Learned Women (1692) have practically nothing 
to offer towards a history of learned English women. John 
Evelyn’s Numismata (1697) giyes a list of renowned persons 
‘worthy the honour of Medal,” in the course of which he men- 
tions some instances of the “‘ Learned, Virtuous and Fair Sex,” 
beginning with Boadicea. Thirteen Englishwomen are in the 
list, but with only the briefest notice. Giles Jacob’s Poetical 
Register (1724) goes more into detail, but in his two volumes 
there are only fifteen pages of female biography. Mrs. Cooper 
includes no woman in her Muse’s Library (1737) and Hayward 
in his The British Muse (1738) makes but one quotation from a 
woman. John Wilford’s Memorials and Characters (1741) was 
compiled with the idea of presenting examples of piety and 
virtue. Of the eighty-one women noted only a few come within 
the category of learned women. Thomas Birch in his J/lustrious 
Persons of Great Britain (1752) includes no women but Queens. 

The meager gleanings from the best biographical records 
before 1752 put stronger emphasis on the importance of George 
Ballard’s Memoirs of Several Ladies of Great Britain as a book 
of original research, and as the first source of detailed and or- 
dered, and, in general, accurate information concerning the 
learned women of England.! 

Of later sources the first is Theophilus Cibber’s Lives of the 

1 Page 354. 


422 THE LEARNED LADY 


Poets (1753). Rather full accounts of fourteen women are given 
by Cibber, eight of them being names not included in Ballard’s 
book.! The Eminent Ladies (1755) was but a weak compilation 
of poems with brief and perfunctory comment. In the New and 
General Biographical Dictionary, published in 1761, the most 
imposing biographical work of the period, out of more than 
five thousand names less than twenty English women of letters 
are listed. 

The first book after Ballard to take up female biography ex- 
clusively appeared in 1766 and is entitled: Biographium Fem- 
ineum. The Female Worthies: or, Memoirs of the Most Illus- 
trious Ladies of all Ages and Nations, who have been Eminently 
distinguished for their Magnanimity, Learning, Genius, Virtue, 
Piety, and other excellent Endowments, conspicuous in all the 
various Stations and Relations of Life, public and private. Con- 
taining (exclusive of Foreigners) The Lives of above Fourscore 
British Ladies, who have shone with a peculiar Lustre, and 
given the noblest proofs of the most exalted Genius, and Swperior 
Worth. Collected from History, and the most approved Biogra- 
phers, and brought down to the present Times (1766). This book 
is based on Ballard, Cibber, and Eminent Ladies, but also, un- 
fortunately, accepts Amory as an authority. 

In 1779 William Alexander published The History of Women, 


1 The newnames are Mrs. Behn, Mrs. Manley, Mrs. Centlivre, Mrs. Thomas, 
Mrs. Rowe, Mrs. Cockburn, Mrs. Pilkington, and Miss Chandler. Ballard 
(p. vii) gives a list of the ladies who had a reputation for learning, but concern- 
ing whom he could get no information. The list is as follows: “Lady Mary 
Nevil, Lady Anne Southwell, Lady Honor Hay, Lady Mary Wroath, Lady 
Armyn, Lady Ranelagh, Lady Anne Boynton (famous for her skill in ancient 
coins, and noble collection of them), Lady Levet, Lady Warner. Gentlewomen: 
Mrs. Mabilla Vaughan, Mrs. Elizabeth Grimstone, Mrs. Jane Owen, Mrs. M. 
Croft, Mrs. Emilia Lanyer, Mrs. Makins (who corresponded in the learned 
languages with Mrs. Maria 4 Schurman), Mrs. Gertrude More, Mrs. Dorothy 
Leigh.” None of Cibber’s additions appear in this list. Apparently Ballard’s 
omission of writers of comedy and fiction would indicate that he did not count 
them among the learned. The omission of Mrs. Cockburn is less explicable. 
The five Lives given by both Ballard and Cibber are of the Duchess of New- 
castle, Anne Killigrew, Lady Chudleigh, Mrs. Monk, Lady Winchilsea, and 
Mrs. Grierson. 


SUMMARY 423 


in two volumes. Mr. Alexander has comparatively little to say 
about learned women. He wrote, he said, to “amuse and instruct 
the Fair Sex,” hoping thus to lure them from poring over novels 
and romances. He avoided technical and foreign terms and all 
citation of authorities as being “‘perplexing to the sex,” and 
while his book professes to be a sort of propagandist tract for 
female education, he so abhors female pendantry and so laments 
fair eyes dimmed by severe and intense study that his book is a 
distinct reaction from the dignified earlier ideals. Dr. Johnson 
admits no women into the society of his fifty-two English Poeis 
(1779-81). The Biographia Britannica (1778-93) includes Mary 
Beale and ten literary women. All of these except Mrs. Delany 
had appeared in Ballard or Cibber. Mary Hays’s Female Biog- 
raphy, published in England in 1803 and in America in 1807, in 
three volumes, includes celebrated women in “all Ages and 
Countries.” It is based on Ballard and the other authorities 
already indicated. The uncritical character of the book is in- 
dicated by the remark of Miss Hays, “‘My book is intended for 
women and not for scholars.”” Robert Southey, in 1809, in his 
Specimens of the Later English Poets, begins with the time of 
James II. Out of two hundred and twenty-three poets rep- 
resented, seventeen are women. In the thirty-two volumes 
of Chalmers’s General Biographical Dictionary (1812) about 
thirty English learned ladies are briefly noted. In Campbell’s 
British Poets (1819) there is but one woman, Katherine Philips, 
among the one hundred and seventy names he gives. Alexander 
Dyce, in Specimens of British Poetesses, in 1827, gives brief ex- 
tracts in chronological order from eighty-three authors, but with 
only the slightest possible apparatus of notes and dates. The 
purpose of Mr. Dyce was to exhibit the progress of English 
women in poetry, and his book was planned and partly executed 
before he happened upon the Eminent Ladies, a reprint of which 
appeared about 1780. On a perusal of that book he found it so 
unimportant a precursor as not to interfere with his plan. Over 
half of Mr. Dyce’s work is given to women after 1750. Of the 
forty-nine before that period, beginning with Juliana Berners 


424 THE LEARNED LADY 


and ending with Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, very few are 
represented by more than two or three pages of quotation. Lady 
Winchilsea, owing doubtless to Wordsworth’s recent eulogy of 
her, is given eleven pages. Mr. Dyce did considerable independ- 
ent research, for he quoted from a good many poems by women 
not mentioned by previous authors. Wordsworth had planned 
a similar work and had made extracts for it, “lucid crystals,” he 
says, “culled from a Parnassian Cave seldom trod.” 

About the middle of the nineteenth century various books, 
such as Miss Costello’s Memoirs of Eminent Englishwomen 
(1844), Mrs. Hale’s Woman’s Record (1853), Jane Williams’s 
Iiterary Women of England (1861), Julia Kavanagh’s English 
Women of Letters (1863), with other compilations treating es- 
pecially of late eighteenth-century fiction but recognizing also 
the works of Mrs. Behn, Mrs. Manley, and Mrs. Haywood, 
seemed to indicate a recrudescence of interest in the work of 
women. But in most of these books the treatment is so vague 
and popular as to be of little use. 

Of more value than formal condensed statements in biograph- 
ical compilations are autobiographies, letters, contemporary al- 
lusions, works in prose and verse, prefaces, and early individ- 
ual biographies. Thanks to a steadily growing interest in the 
period 1660 to 1800, there has been an accumulation during 
recent years of special critical editions of early works, of manu- 
scripts published after long years of oblivion, and of reprints of 
valuable productions. It is in particular to this class of material 
that the student must go in an attempt to evolve personalities 
from scattered facts. 

The term “‘learned ” as applied to women demands careful 
Thetemn chronological definition. It would be used to- 
“learned” day, without any strong bias of approval or 
disapproval, to describe a woman who in some reputable realm 
of learning has a competent apparatus of the facts involved, 
and a mind trained to order and interpret these facts. Such 
intellectual activity would be differentiated from creative work 
in poetry, fiction, and drama. But the phrase “learned women” 


SUMMARY 425 


as used in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries had no 
such specialized application. The contemporary defenders of 
“ The Excellency of the Female Sex ” give the widest and loosest 
possible meaning to the term. It sometimes stood for the most 
solid attainments, but it was also made to cover very rudimen- 
tary intellectual strivings. An avowed taste for reading, the 
faintest interest in physical phenomena, the composition of 
slight little poems, the writing-out of prayers and meditations, 
even the copying of extracts into a common-place book, could, 
in applause or derision, be counted as learned occupations. 
This wide inclusiveness results inevitably in the practical break- 
ing-down of any set of qualities as necessarily connoted by the 
term “learned.” 

Equally undiscriminating was the use of examples whereby 
to establish the possible mentality of women. History and tra- 
dition were of equal authority, the Muses and Sibyls counting 
as much as the great names of later days. The uncritical lists 
of learned ladies record as of apparently equal importance the 
“physical fancies” of the Duchess of Newcastle and the exact 
botanical knowledge of Elizabeth Blackwell; the playful co- 
quetting with foreign tongues by some society ladies and the 
close linguistic attainments of Miss Elstob or Mrs. Collyer; the 
wide sweep of general information of Mrs. Delany and the mi- 
nute investigation into the field of early English by Mrs. Cooper. 

A similar ill-defined use of the term “‘learned”’ is inevitable 
in the present attempt to estimate the intellectual tendencies of 
the seventeenth and eighteenth century women. In the eval- 
uation of the work of individual women as their names arise 
critical standards can be given due weight. But in general it is 
not the object of this study to test the scholastic, scientific, or 
literary work of the women of the period by modern academic 
ideas of excellence. The purpose here is rather to show the num- 
ber of women whose interests were intellectual, whose chosen 
pursuits had to do with books and things of the mind, and who 
were demanding a new freedom of self-expression, new training, 
and new opportunities. — 


426 THE LEARNED LADY 


Still another preliminary statement seems necessary. The 
period from 1650 to 1760 is a rich and crowded one. Even when 
regarded from a single comparatively barren point of view such 
as an account of learned women, it offers too much material for 
a single volume. To keep at all within limits it is necessary to 
hold the presentation of each learned woman merely to those 
points in her life and work that have to do with her as an ex- 
ponent of new ideals for women, or as marking by her own 
achievements new feminine possibilities in the arts, in learning, 
or in letters. Complete presentation would involve almost a 
separate volume for each important woman. Many of the 
women here studied offer interesting subjects for further inves- 
tigation. A new insight into the religious, the social, and the 
domestic life of the period would be given by full biographies 
of such women as Anne Killigrew, Lady Winchilsea, Bathsua 
Makin, Mrs. Cooper, and indeed of many others. Such studies 
would be invaluable as a contribution to the history of the late 
seventeenth and the early eighteenth century. 

A retrospect of the progress of the intellectual freedom and 
Periods inintel- the systematic education of women in England 
lectual progress does not reveal an orderly acceleration from 
pat gee period to period. There are, instead, periods of 
activity followed by periods of quiescence. Two such periods, 
one of activity, one of quiescence, may be noted before the 
Restoration. 

The reigns of Henry VIII and Elizabeth have been called the 
golden age for learned women,! and even a cursory glance over 
these years serves to justify that reputation. Theoretical state- 
ments by distinguished foreigners such as that by Castiglione; 
the opinions of such men as Vives and Hyrde, of Mulcaster, 
Ascham, Udall, and Erasmus; the example of the royal family 
and many great nobles in securing the most learned instruction 
for their daughters; the influence of at least two learned queens, 
Catherine of Aragon and Elizabeth; the actual scholarship of 
many distinguished women; the warm praise of this scholarship 

1 Pages 4-23. 


SUMMARY “427 


by the most eminent men, made up a general atmosphere 
strongly stimulating to learned attainment by women. Individ- 
ual opportunities of so high a character, and a reception so genial 
and even eager towards the intellectual activity of women did 
not again recur in England. But this golden age remains as 
hardly more than a brilliant picture; it has practically no im- 
portant place in the progress of the education of women. The 
advantages given to women were nullified, so far as initiating 
more widespread activities is concerned, by two inherent defects. 
The learning of women had no legitimate purpose or outcome 
beyond the home. It was the object of adulation and flattery, 
but it seldom came into competition with the work of men where 
it could be judged on its merits. It had always a small audience 
favorably disposed in advance. Learning was a kind of high- 
class individual accomplishment purely for home consumption. 
A second defect was that learning belonged only to the daugh- 
ters of the nobility or of the very rich. Even within these bounds 
it was sporadic, depending entirely on the opinion of the head 
of the family. 

A gradual decline of interest in scholarship as an appropriate 
pursuit for damsels of high lineage was apparent even in Eliza- 
bethan days, and the change from Tudor ideals became marked 
in the period from the death of Elizabeth to the Restoration. 
James looked upon women with contempt. Queen Anne’s 
mother, Sophia of Mecklenburg, was a highly gifted woman 
who, after her retirement from public life, devoted her leisure to 
astronomy, chemistry, and other sciences. But Anne had none 
of her mother’s intellectual interests. She cared only for fine 
dresses and jewels, progresses and masks, and gay frivolous en- 
tertainments.? So she brought no literary ideals or ambitions to 
counteract the king’s cold indifference to education in general. 
Under Charles I and Henrietta Maria there might readily have 
arisen in a new and lighter form some educational ideals or 


1 Pages 23-37. 
2 Strickland, Agnes: Lives of the Queens of England, under ‘‘ Anne of Den- 
mark.” 


428 _ THE LEARNED LADY 


schemes favorable to women, for the King loved music and 
painting and had well-developed literary tastes, and the Queen 
had great respect for the French salons of her day and was in- 
terested in the general ideas of the précieuses. But the troubled 
times of the Civil War turned the minds of both men and women 
to sterner tasks. And it is perhaps not strange that this period 
proves the most barren one in English history so far as the 
education of girls is concerned. 

At the Restoration we enter upon a new era of feminine ac- 
tivity. The beginnings of this era do not, however, coincide 
sharply with 1660, but belong at least a decade earlier. The 
chief women writing and studying between 1650 and 1675,! the 
Duchess of Newcastle, Mrs. Philips, Mary North, Dorothy 
Osborne, Margaret Blagge, Lady Pakington, the Countess of 
Warwick, Mrs. Hutchinson, and Lady Fanshawe, brilliantly 
ushered in this new period. With the coming of peace and na- 
tional security women were apparently conscious not only of 
a new freedom, but of a new power and a new demand for some 
form of personal expression. After the unusual services rendered 
by them in war-times they could not settle down at once into the 
tame concerns of peace. This does not refer particularly to the 
women counted the heroines of the Civil War. It refers rather 
to the general emotional excitement and freeing of the spirit 
consequent on war activities. There was on the part of women 
a blind and unfocused but persistent and stimulating sense that 
larger and more varied opportunities were awaiting them. La- 
tent powers had been stirred into self-consciousness and could 
not again be lulled into the old quiescence. 

It was not only the inevitable burdens and responsibilities of 
war that had stirred women to new life. They could not fail to 
share in the new sense of personal importance and power that 
came to the people as a whole in their victorious struggle with 
autocracy. But it must be observed that along with this con- 
sciousness of national and political self-realization there was, 
under the Puritans, stern repression in matters of social and 

1 Pages 46-81. 


SUMMARY 429 


religious life. At the coming of Charles, however, all this was 
changed. With disastrous suddenness people found themselves 
free to follow with all gayety of spirit wherever their pleasure- 
loving instincts led. That such breaking of bonds resulted in 
an almost incredible outburst of immorality should not be 
allowed to obscure the fact that there was also a remarkable 
freeing of the mind from conventional standards. For good or 
for evil the individual found himself free to give energetic ex- 
pression to his individual tendencies. By this freedom, by this 
license, women as well as men were profoundly moved. 

The new impulses thus brought into being did not, however, 
give rise to anything like orderly and progressive activity on the 
part of women. The century following 1660 is seen to be an in- 
choate assemblage of beginnings. It is rich with a promise that 
comes to no decisive result. The path, instead of leading to 
some well-marked fortress or to some mount of vision, loses it- 
self in unmeaning meanders. 

There is, indeed, after the middle of the eighteenth century, 
even an appearance of retrogression in the attention devoted to 
learned pursuits for women. It is not till the end of that cen- 
tury that the movement acquires new momentum. Until we 
come to Catharine Macaulay, the novelists in the last quarter 
of the century, and Mary Wollstonecraft at its end, we have lit- 
tle that is new in theory or striking in achievement. From 1760 
to 1775 no new woman writer of distinction appears. On ideals 
of education and conduct, Dr. James Fordyce, Mrs. Barbauld, 
and Mrs. Chapone, the recognized arbiters, are tame compilers 
of bromidic maxims with little of the dignity and spirit of the 
best writers on feminism six or seven decades earlier. The ac- 
tual accomplishment of the period before 1760 was a destruc- 
tion of old placidities, a restlessness of discussion, rather than a 
movement reaching definite achievement. But this discussion 
and the many individual examples of literary or learned accom- 
plishment on the part of women were together slowly having 
their collective effect. Finally salons came and gave social pres- 
tige to the women who could think and talk brilliantly, and 


430 THE LEARNED LADY 


gave a tremendous impetus, if not to actual learning, yet to the 
idea that a woman should have sense, intelligence, a wide 
knowledge of books, and an understanding of history and cur- 
rent affairs. — 

From Catharine Macaulay to about the time of Tennyson’s 
Princess is a period possessing considerable unity and one that 
would reward minute study. Such an investigation would bring 
us close to the establishment of great schools for the higher 
education of women and their consequent entrance upon a new 
era, an era that should look back with astonishment and respect 
to such ancestors as Anna van Schurman, Bathsua Makin, Dr. 
Hickes, and Mary Astell. 

One of the most promising characteristics of the work of 
The learned women is the emergence of learning from the 
woman and a aristocratic seclusion of the “golden age.” In 
puplis Tudor times it was in courtly circles only that 
learning was counted appropriate for women. Elizabeth Lucar 
stands as a solitary record of a lady from the wealthy middle 
class whose accomplishments were similar to those in the palaces 
of the great. But a significant change is to be noted in the cen- 
tury initiated about 1660. Duchesses and countesses are listed 
with wives and daughters of the clergy, of rich merchants, of 
needy tradesmen. From the Duchess of Newcastle to Mary 
Leapor, the gardener’s daughter, the roll shows that aristocratic 
restrictions are no longer in full force in the realm of letters. In 
intimate connection with this change is the fact that author- 
ship is no longer a private, home affair. The days when Mar- 
garet Roper was praised because she found her father and hus- 
band a sufficient audience had passed forever. The work of 
women was no longer a carefully tended flower of the hot-house. 
It must grow in the open. To be sure, women hesitated to pub- 
lish. The Orindas and Astrzas and Philomelas and Ardelias, 
whom Richardson derides as “‘the lovely dastards ” of the sex, 
show how women sought protecting pseudonyms. But publish 
they did. They craved readers. The applauding males of their 
households were no longer adequate. Under the spell of a thou- 


SUMMARY 431 


sand traditional timidities and reluctancies they yet desired to 
see their words on the printed page, and they secretly coveted 
a public. 

Furthermore, women were thinking of authorship as a tool 
and as a weapon, not merely as a private resource. Mrs. Behn, 
the first English woman to write definitely for money, was but 
the precursor of various women in succeeding years who came 
to regard the products of their minds as of pecuniary signifi- 
cance. Especially is this true towards the end of the period. 
When we find Mrs. Haywood and Mrs. Manley writing fiction 
of a sort that will sell, Mrs. Blackwell doing superb botanical 
work in order to pay the fine imposed on her husband, or Mrs. 
- Collyer writing that she may supplement a meager income and 
educate her children, we may not have come upon great art or 
literature, but we have come upon a new idea for women, the 
possible economic value of their work. It was not an idea that 
reached any but the most meager fruition, but at least the seed 
of a new thought was sown. 

A third change was a respect for literature as a weapon, some- 
times of offense, but mainly of defense and propaganda. The 
women who had ideals to promulgate, causes to urge upon the 
indifferent, or evils to be meliorated, found that talking at home 
was weak and futile. They must secure a public, and so the 
pamphlets poured forth. In fact, the fundamental difference 
between the golden age of the Tudors and the much less agree- 
able period for learned women after the Restoration was this 
matter of a public. Learning for home consumption only and 
as an elegant resource was sterile. However feeble intrinsi- 
cally, learning and letters used for a purpose and submitted to 
a public had within it the seeds of vitality and the promise 
of a future. 

Of greater significance still is the large number of women who 
gave themselves to intellectual pursuits. From farge number 
Mrs. Philips to Mrs. Collyer the roll is impres- of intellectual 
sively long. Macaulay’s statement concerning “°"™ 
the illiteracy of the women of the period may have some justi- 


432 THE LEARNED LADY 


fication, but the exceptions are so numerous as almost to dis- 
prove the rule. And all the way down the line there is the sug- 
gestion that many other women of like tastes and attainments 
have been lost in obscurity. Many extant productions have 
been preserved only by chance. Dorothy Osborne’s letters, the 
biographies by Mrs. Hutchinson and Lady Fanshawe, Celia 
Fiennes’s travels, Lady Winchilsea’s grand folio, to name but a 
few, escaped destruction mainly through the undisturbed con- 
tinuity of the family life, and possibly the inertia, of their 
possessors. And where a few manuscripts have been saved, 
many more have doubtless been destroyed. The loss to learning 
and letters is probably slight. But in estimating the strength of 
a tendency the numbers who were affected by it count as im- 
portant testimony. Every woman whose mind was alert, de- 
manding intellectual sustenance, and struggling towards self- 
expression, adds a further fraction of proof as to the vitality of 
the new impulse. And, while not susceptible of absolute verifi- 
cation, the general tantalizing consciousness of many shadowy 
presences of women whose ideas and efforts never reached the 
printed page is a not unimportant factor in one’s personal con- 
viction as to the very large number of women who were affected 
by the new unrest and the new aspiration hidden away under 
the ordinary routine of thought and work. But even without 
any such shadowy presences the list is long enough to be con- 
vincing. 

In an attempt to tabulate the variety of ways in which 
Types of work Women sought self-expression, we note first 
but scantily those fields of endeavor in which their work was 
sepmeaented but scantily represented. In some cases these 
areas of restricted productivity are characteristic of the age in 
general, in some cases, the outcome of limitations imposed on 
women in particular. 

One type of the woman interested in letters becomes practi- 
cally non-existent in the period under discussion, and that is the 
patroness whose rank and wealth and intellectual tastes sum- 
moned about her a brilliant coterie of poets and men of science 


SUMMARY 433 


to whom she extended substantial aid. The patroness plays no 
important part in English life after Elizabethan times. Lady 
Bedford is the last noted representative. Mary North’s little 
circle of literary ladies, and the Matchless Orinda’s “Circle of 
Friendship” are coteries, but without a Lady Bountiful as the 
center. Lady Pakington comes nearer the type in her assem- 
blage of Church of England divines. But on the whole the pa- 
troness and salon are not revived till the time of the bas bleus in 
the mid-eighteenth century, and then only in a modified form. 

In the fine arts the attainments of women were slight and 
amateurish. Mary Beale was the only portrait-painter of dis- 
tinction, and in landscape-painting no woman is represented by 
valuable canvases. But the same state of affairs held true of 
English men. With the solitary exception of Mr. Riley all of the 
noted portrait-painters in England before 1760 were foreigners. 
The landscape artists, too, were foreigners, or were mere copiers 
of the Italian or Flemish masters. So the deficiency of women in 
the fine arts may justly be counted but a part of the general 
national deficiency. The immediate and permanent success of 
women on the stage has been sufficiently emphasized. But it 
should also be noted that acting was a career necessarily limited 
to a comparatively small number of women. 

Many kinds of work more or less professional in character 
were but slightly represented. Except for governesses in great 
families and the mistresses of boarding-schools for girls there 
were no women teachers, hence teaching as an ultimate goal was 
eliminated as a determining factor in the kind of intellectual 
work pursued. Even the governesses were not chosen for schol- 
arship, but for character and good-breeding. They had to do 
only with little children, and had no need for learning. And 
the school-mistresses secured outside masters for the various 
studies and accomplishments, confining their own work to mor- 
als and general management. 

Women had so long had home medicaments to make and ad- 
minister, the mistress of a great estate had so long been the sole 
resort in matters concerning the health of her dependents, that 


434 THE LEARNED LADY 


we might expect medicine to be one of the first important new 
fields conquered by women, but such was not the case. The 
Duchess of Newcastle, to be sure, gave her fancy free rein in 
the wide fields of anatomy and physiology. But besides such 
young women as Elizabeth Bury, renowned for her knowledge 
of simples and her skill in diagnosis, and Jane Barker who fol- 
lowed her brother’s lead in reading medical works, there are no 
English women on record before 1760 as having given them- 
selves with any serious interest to the study of medicine. The 
only possible exception would be in midwifery. In this depart- 
ment of medical or surgical practice women had the matter 
almost in their own hands. Mrs. Pilkington says that her father, 
Dr. Van Lewen, was the first man midwife in England. There 
must, then, have been developed among women considerable 
knowledge and practical skill. But their work was in no sense of 
professional rank. There was no definite training required, there 
was no way of applying standardized tests of excellence, and 
there was no organization among the women themselves. And 
almost no women attempted to put into book form the results 
of their experience. Mrs. Jane Sharp’s The Midwives’ Book 
(1671) is a solitary exception. Mrs. Cellier’s book advocating 
the maintenance of a “Corporation of Skilful Midwives” is 
the only suggestion I have found looking towards professional 
training and recognition such as nurses now receive. 

In housekeeping matters women were also in the main con- 
tent to do the work without any formal statements of the mys- 
teries of their art. There was much passing about of receipts 
for cookery, for toilet preparations, for curative drinks and 
salves, but when these were collected and published, it was 
usually the work of some enterprising book-seller. Mrs. Hannah 
Woolley, Mrs. “A. M.,” and Mrs. Hannah Glasse, are the only 
women I have come upon who could even in the faintest way 
foreshadow the great mass of present-day writing on questions 
of domestic science. 

Although the satire in some of the comedies would indicate 
that women were manifesting some interest in the new discov- 


SUMMARY 435 


eries through the telescope and the microscope, and were some- 
times giving themselves to laboratory experiments in dissec- 
tion, there is no serious record of any real research in science 
by women. Even Mrs. Blackwell’s exquisite and accurate bo- 
tanical work is an artistic rather than a scientific achievement 
so far as she herself is concerned. Her botanical facts were not 
entirely the result of personal investigation. 

To be “the breeders of children in their low age” had always 
been so unquestionably the province of women that they would 
supposedly be past-masters in that art, and it might be ex- 
pected that they would use the first freedom of their pen to 
write such things as would suit the tastes and needs of children. 

_ Again, such is not the case. But it must be recognized that there 
was nowhere any catering to the literary needs of children. 
Bunyan’s Book for Boys and Girls (1680), Mason’s Little Cate- 
chism (1693), Watts’s Divineand Moral Songs for Children (1720) 
represent a few attempts to render religious truth more palata- 
ble to the child’s mind, but rea] literature for children did not 
begin till 1744. Mr. Newberry’s Little Pretty Pocket Book of that 

“year initiated a kind of literature the vast extent of which can 
now hardly be estimated. And in the earliest period of litera- 
ture for children Mrs. Collyer’s Christmas Bor and Miss Field- 
ing’s Litile Female Academy, both in 1749, must take an honor- 
able place. 

One more kind of work for which women have manifested 
exceptional ability in modern times is in the conduct of human- 
itarian enterprises. Traditionally they were the loaf-givers. 
The new thing was to organize generosity into permanent efii- 
ciency and to make it operative beyond the limits of the family 
estate. Mrs. Bovey and Lady Elizabeth Hastings are early in- 
stances of women devoting time, mentality, and money to the 
development of systematic benevolence. But there were few 
women whose economic independence and sense of civic re- 
sponsibility were so happily united. 

Still another realm in which women to-day are finding large 
opportunity was practically closed to the women of earlier 


436 THE LEARNED LADY 


times, and that is public speaking. Except among the Quakers 
no woman spoke, on any subject whatsoever, before an audi- 
ence. She might sing or she might act with applause. But talk- 
_ ing was outside her bounds. Acting was but repeating the words 
of others; singing was a gift of the gods; but talking to an audi- 
ence, whether to delight or instruct, carried plain implications 
of self-conscious superiority in knowledge or power. It was in- 
credibly unfeminine and not to be endured. On this topic the 
authority of St. Paul was still unquestioned. 

If from the women who are to-day preparing for some sort of 
professional work, we should exclude all who expect to teach, all 
who are planning to enter upon some sort of scientific research, 
all who are training themselves for public speaking, all who 
are preparing for the effective management of large enterprises, 
all who are writing on domestic or medical matters, the scope 
of feminine activity would be almost unbelievably narrowed. 
These various kinds of work are now recognized channels 
through which whatever ability a woman may have may find 
expression. But in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries if 
a woman had a good mind and felt impelled to use it, none of 
these avenues were normally open to her. It is difficult to imag- 
ine what the withdrawal of all these opportunities would mean 
in the reduction of adequate stimuli to good work. Hence the 
few women who did pioneer work in these various departments 
must have been moved by some strong urgency of the spirit. 
They were adventurers lured by the fascination of the new and 
the untried, and their effort is significant even when the region 
they conquered proved to be but the barren edge of a great 
continent. 

It was in writing that women were least hampered, and, as 
has been stated, it was in writing that we find their work most 
varied and abundant. 

As playwrights they were especially successful in comedy. 
Women Mrs. Behn and Mrs. Centlivre take a very cred- 
playwrights itable rank in the comedy of lively intrigue and 
social satire. Tragedy appealed to more women writers than did 


SUMMARY 437 


comedy, but they were less successful in that realm. Tragedy 
wasconsidered so inherently virtuous that the most high-minded 
could find in it edification, and young girls who were forbidden 
attendance on comedies were freely allowed to witness trage- 
dies. For this reason women writers with dramatic aspirations, 
but to whom the license of the comedy was distasteful, ap- 
plied themselves to tragedy. That Catherine Cockburn’s Fatal 
Friendship should be counted the best of these tragedies is per- 
haps a sufficient condemnation of the entire series. But it must 
be again remembered that it was not an age in which any 
writers excelled in tragedy. The heroic plays of Dryden, the 
domestic tragedy of Otway, and here and there a play of 
“some contemporary vogue, such as Ambrose Philips’s Distressed 
Mother and Addison’s Caio, practically make up the list. Of the 
tragedies recorded by Genest between 1660 and 1760 very few of 
those having any but the most ephemeral success are by con- 
temporary authors. Hence the failure of women in this realm 
is in accordance with the trend of the times. 
Novels did not come into existence till so late in the period 
under discussion that we have little chance to bat 
. ° 6 iction 

test women in this field which later proved to be 

peculiarly their own. Mrs. Behn’s romances, with their realistic 
detail, their high-wrought emotions, scenic setting, and didactic 
intent, gave early examples of what might be done. But it is 
not till after Richardson that women had conspicuous success 
in works of fiction. After Mrs. Behn and before 1760 we have 
only the scandalous annals of Mrs. Manley and Mrs. Haywood, 
Miss Barker’s inchoate autobiographic tales, Mrs. Lennox’s 
satiric novel, and the didactic stories of Mrs. Collyer and Miss 
Fielding. 

In an age when facile versifying was counted a gentleman’s 
accomplishment, and when the heroic couplet 
3 5 < are Poetry 

offered a form in which mechanical precision 

could be tested by the rule of the thumb, it would be strange if 
women with some literary knack did not write poetry. And it 
is true that nearly every woman who wielded a pen trained it 


438 THE LEARNED LADY 


sometimes into the conventional pindarics or heroics. But on 
the whole, with most women writers poetry was but an occa- 
sional resource. It was not their chosen métier. There were, in 
fact, but two women, Mrs. Philips and Lady Winchilsea, who 
took their stand on poetry as their life’s achievement. Orinda 
had grace, tenderness, and fine feeling. Ardelia had subtlety 
of intuition, a delicate independence of taste, and an occasional 
high excellence of form and phrase. By these qualities these 
two women are marked off from the poetasters of their day and 
have some permanent importance. But the mass of verse by 
women was undistinguished. It offers, however, some interest- 
ing general characteristics. 

Compared to the total amount of verse by women, religious 
verse takes an unexpectedly small place. In no case that I can 
recall were a woman’s religious poems her best work. The most 
popular as well as the most turgid and commonplace sort of 
religious writing was the Scripture paraphrase. Poems of pure 
devotion, of prayer and of praise, are less often found. In such 
as do occur we might expect the personal note, something 
winged and lyrical. But they are disappointingly timid and 
imitative. We have various proofs that there was no absolute 
lack of poignant spiritual conflict and endeavor during this 
period, but religious emotion was apparently so accustomed to 
decorous forms that it could not be driven into the nakedness 
of soul consequent upon religious abasement or ecstasy. The 
best religious verse of the period avoids strong emotions. It con- 
sists of gentle moralizing touched by personal feeling. There 
is a note of genuineness in the emphasis on fortitude, on self- 
control and self-abnegation, and on melancholy endurance. 
But the most that can be said for the religious poetry by 
women is that it was about on a par with contemporary re- 
ligious poetry by men. It was an age of strong church affilia- 
tions and of theological discussion, but it was not an age that 
invited the expression of fervent religious emotion. 

There is also little genuine love poetry. There is much that 
is friendly and affectionate, but almost nothing that is impas- 


SUMMARY 439 


sioned. This, however, is a negation applicable to all verse of 
the period. Few memorable love lyrics are to be found in 
English verse between Waller’s Go, lovely rose, and the songs of 
Robert Burns. But women had been so long emancipated from 
reason and traditionally given over to the feelings that love 
poetry, at least of the sentimental variety, might have been 
thought their natural output. As a matter of fact, the case was 
quite otherwise. The poetry by women had not, in general, 
what would be termed a feminine tone. Women do not seem to 
have given their instincts free play when they took up the poet- 
ical quill. Poetry was either a trifling temporary resource or it 
Was a serious, even solemn affair, and must concern itself with 

weighty matters of vice and virtue. The style in poetry is con- 
sequently much less effective than in prose. There is almost 
nowhere through all the mass of this verse any brightness of 
fancy, any playfulness of wit, any mollifying sense of humor. 
There is little lightness of touch, there are few felicities and un- 
forgettable lines. And there is more of scorn, indignation, and 
didacticism than of sweetness and light. 

In various departments of prose women writers reached an 
excellence considerably above the general prose autobiography 
average of the time. This is especially true in 274 letters 
certain rather new branches of writing. The fragments of auto- 
biography that have come down to us are almost without ex- 
ception fresh, unpretentious, and delightful pieces of work. The 
records given us by the Duchess of Newcastle, Mrs. Hutchin- 
son, Miss Barker, Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, Elizabeth 
Elstob, and others, simply whet the appetite for more. If Anne 
Killigrew and Anne Kingsmill and Bathsua Pell and Lady 
Elizabeth Hastings, and very many other ladies, had left simi- 
lar records we should have a legacy of simple, straightforward, 
and individual prose worth reams of pindarics or theological 
discussions. The intimate personal appeal of the subject-matter 
seemed to make for a picturesqueness and homely vigor of 
style. The only women who wrote biography — the Duchess of 
Newcastle, Lady Fanshawe, and Mrs. Hutchinson—wrote about 


440 THE LEARNED LADY 


their husbands, so they were, in reality, carrying on the auto- 
biographical element. And their success is perhaps due to an 
intimate knowledge of the facts, and a strong personal interest 
such as had animated the sketches of their own childhood. At 
any rate, these three Lives rank in interest with Evelyn’s Mrs. 
Godolphin and Roger North’s Lives of the Norths. Letters be- 
long in the same general realm, and offer some of the most en- 
tertaining writing of the period. There are many reasons for 
thinking that letter-writing was a more general feminine re- 
source than existing records would indicate. Such letters as are 
now extant have been preserved almost by accident. They 
were not counted of contemporary importance and very few of 
them reached publication before the nineteenth century. Yet the 
list is fairly representative. 

We have the letters of Margaret Blagge to Mr. Godolphin; 
those of the Osborne ladies, Dorothy, Martha, and Sarah; 
Orinda’s epistles to Poliarchus; Mrs. Evelyn’s letters to her 
son’s tutor; Mrs. Rowe’s to the Duchess of Somerset; Mrs. 
Delany’s to numerous friends; Miss Talbot’s to Miss Carter; 
Miss Carter’s to a host of correspondents; Mrs. Cockburn’s to 
her lovers and to her niece; and Lady Mary Wortley Mon- 
tagu’s records from many lands as well as her early letters 
to Mr. Montagu. As a body of documentary material these 
letters are invaluable. And they are interesting reading. The 
keen eye for dress and customs would have qualified some 
of these ladies for the novel of manners. There are pun- 
gent character sketches and witty comment on social foibles. 
These letters show often a humor and gayety of spirit such as 
find entrance into no other forms of feminine writing. And 
the style is almost uniformly easy and natural. Dorothy Os- 
borne’s objection to stilted and pedantic letters could have 
been applicable to few women letter-writers. They had no 
thought of a public and so escaped the snare of professionalism 
in tone. The letters contain records of love and of grief, of 
moments of vivid emotion, of deep spiritual experience, of 
friendships and of hatreds, of hopes and despairs, and because 


SUMMARY 441 


all these came from the mind and the heart of the writer they 
are told in a convincing manner. 

Another similar realm is that of travels. When women went 
on tours they saw everything that was to be 
seen. And they set down the details with infinite 
patience. Celia Fiennes has no literary style at all, but no other 
description of England between 1650 and 1760 contains so 
much detail worth remembering. She was the most spirited and 
indefatigable of travelers, and this intensity of interest found its 
way into her book and communicates itself to the reader. Had 
she kept her diary with any remotest thought of publication 
she might have been more lucid, but she might also have been 
~ less vigorous, individual, and picturesque. Lady Mary Wortley 
Montagu’s Turkish Letters created a sensation, as well they 
might, for as a writer of travels she out-distanced all competi- 
tors. 

The kinds of prose writing so far indicated were all animated 
by personal experience and interest. That is certainly one se- 
cret of their charm. And it is to be observed that they are 
marked by qualities of observation and analysis later proved 
natural to women by their success in fiction. But there is 
another department of writing less naturally associated with 
women in which they were nevertheless conspicuous for merit, 
and that is some form of controversial writing. 

When women espoused and defended a cause, it was with a 
heat of personal conviction that robbed them of 
self-consciousness and contributed to vigor and 
animation of style. Even earlier women, such as Anna van 
Schurman and Mrs. Makin, who felt that to be convincing 
they must show their ability to argue with the most rigid scho- 
lastic apparatus, now and then had passages of high-wrought 
feeling or indignation that burst the trammels of their logical 
form, and carry even to modern readers a sense of the intensity 
of conviction that moved the writer. Bathsua Pell’s Essay in 
1673 is an admirable piece of propagandist writing. No de- 
fender of higher education in the early days of women’s colleges 


Travels 


Propaganda 


442 THE LEARNED LADY 


was more pungent in attack, or tossed off the unmeaning argu- 
ments of opponents with more contemptuous ease. In writ- 
ing on the higher education of women it is with the zeal of an 
enthusiast that Mary Astell marshals the details of her new 
scheme. She had thought her plan through to the end and she 
describes it with clearness and precision. Its noble possibilities 
give rise to seriousness and dignity of style. And when her 
mind is overborne by a recognition of the many foolish women 
and the scornful men who would render her ideals abortive, she 
is roused to passages of energetic satire. She is even acrimoni- 
ous and vituperative. There is nothing soft or appealing or fem- 
inine about her work. If she convinces it will not be by the arts 
of her sex, but by argument and caustic attack. She does not 
entreat, she commands and instructs. The anonymous author 
of the Defence describes, with keen analysis, picturesque phras- 
ing, and gay raillery, the beaux, the clodpate squires, the ped- 
ants, and the virtuosi of her day. Few contemporary satiric 
portraits are of more penetrating wit. “Sophia” of pamphlet 
fame carries on the successful propagandist writing. And Lady 
Winchilsea’s one prose essay is indicative of her vigorous possi- 
bilities in speech when her ideas and feelings were involved. 
One point concerning the generally dignified tone of these 
essays in defense of women should be noted, and that is that 
they were not the outcome of personally bitter experiences or 
disappointments on the part of the authors. The writing was 
informed rather by a sense of high civic idealism and responsi- 
bility. Though the advancement of women is presented as a 
matter of justice, and of importance to women as individuals, 
the arguments always turn to a larger conception, and that is 
the service rendered to Society and the Church by educated 
women. 

In religious controversy, also, women excelled. A practical 
Religious or personal cause was not imperative. They 
experience and wrote with equal vehemence, sincerity, and will 
pesicray {shey to convince, when they were defending an ab- 
stract principle as when they were protesting against injustice, 


SUMMARY 443 


or trying to further some specific reform. Lady Masham, 
Susanna Hopton, Mary Astell, and Mrs. Cockburn sufficiently 
illustrate the success of women as disputants. The fact that 
nearly all the topics on which these religious controversialists 
wrote are now dead issues, and that the writing has inevitably 
passed into oblivion along with the ideas it championed, should 
not be allowed to obscure the very evident contemporary re- 
spect accorded women as redoubtable antagonists and able 
advocates. There were also women who wrote little, such as 
Lady Pakington and Lady Conway, to whom the best men of 
the day gave high esteem for the soundness of their patristic 
and philosophical learning, and for the acuteness of their 
- thinking. 

Writers on personal religious experience or on hortatory sub- 
jects do not reach so high a grade of work. The prodigious 
industry of various compilers, annotators, and note-takers — 
the true Church of England “sermon-tasters’”” — such as Lady 
Brooke and Lady Halkett, is less indicative of learning than of a 
pronounced religious bias. And in prose, as in verse, the free 
and natural expression of spiritual experience was not charac- 
teristic of the age. 

That more of this controversial and religious writing was not 
published can hardly be counted a loss to literature. Religious 
meditations quicken the inner life, and the effort to put religious 
emotions and beliefs into some literary form must contribute to 
a more active mentality, but the resultant printed page is not 
necessarily of permanent interest. The ardors and acrimonies, 
the labyrinthine twisting of arguments, the niceties of interpre- 
tation, the array of authorities, are all a leaden weight to the 
modern reader. And most meditations on virtues and vices are 
hardly more stimulating. But we cannot pass the great mass of 
these religious writings without noting what a new impression 
they give us of social England, especially in the second half of 
the seventeenth century. A student of Restoration comedy 
sees the court of England in its most frivolous and morally re- 
pellent aspect. But these women whose minds were so set on 


AAA THE LEARNED LADY 


religion were all members of the aristocracy. Margaret Blagge, 
Anne Killigrew, and Anne Kingsmill, women of the most sin- 
cere and ardent piety, were in intimate association with the 
courts of Charles II and James II. Lady Pakington, Lady 
Brooke, Lady Halkett, Lady Masham, Lady Russell, Mary 
Astell, Lady Elizabeth Hastings, and, later, Lady Huntington, 
were all by rank or especial opportunity in the highest and most 
exclusive social circles and so in contact with the profligacy of 
the court. Their extreme assiduity in all matters of religion, in 
church attendance, in private prayer, in meditation, in self- 
examination, in their austere moral standards, were a violent 
reaction from the evil life about them. In the homes and small 
social circles where their influence could be felt was being pre- 
pared a body of moral indignation, a desire for uprightness and 
purity of life, that gave to Jeremy Collier’s attack on the stage 
in 1698 so overwhelming a response, and that was the sustain- 
ing force back of the Societies for the Reformation of Manners 
in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth century. 

The writing done by women between 1660 and 1760 is more 
Work of women impressive from its amount and variety than 
nice ary from any high excellence of its component parts. 
work bymen § A mere calling of the great names of the period 
— Milton, Bunyan, Dryden, Swift, Pope, Addison, and Steele— 
is adequate to show that no woman of the time is comparable 
to these men in mental stamina and energy, or in deft literary 
manipulation. The dramatic work by women presents no such 
brilliant social satire as we find in Etherege and Wycherley, 
no wit so penetrating and’sparkling as in Congreve’s Way of 
the World, no humor so innocent and likable as in Steele’s Ten- 
der Husband. In poetry Orinda and Ardelia make but a poor 
showing beside the giants of the day. There are no women 
writers on literary criticism even approaching the mastery of 
Dryden. There are no essayists with the light touch and social 
ease of Addison and Steele. There are no novelists to be ranked 
with Defoe, Richardson, and Fielding. 

_ These rather damaging negations amount, however, in the 


SUMMARY 445 


final analysis, only to a statement that among the compara- 
tively small number of women writers no one reached the pre- 
eminence of the eight or ten most distinguished literary men. 
But the same statement could be made concerning the crowd of 
men striving for success in authorship. Of most men it could be 
said that their best endeavors left wide unconquered fields be- 
tween them and the elect. It is, indeed, much to say of women 
that, untrained, with no stimulus of money or fame, a consider- 
able number of them yet attained to an honorable place in 
writers of a class below the best, and that in some realms such 
as autobiography, biography, travels, and letter-writing, and 
in writing inspired by some social reform, some propaganda of 
' religion or ethics, they rank among the best of their time. The 
same may be said of their work in pure scholarship. Miss El- 
stob, Miss Carter, and Mrs. Collyer, in their respective fields of 
Anglo-Saxon, Greek, and German, were exact and thorough be- 
yond the demands of contemporary standards. 

But even if there were not many successes to record, the great 
amount of work done by women would still carry its own sort 
of proof. In establishing the existence of a tendency it is not 
the single brilliant example, the genius, the persons of extraor- 
dinary ability, that count. It is rather the aims, ambitions, 
attempts, of many persons variously striving in the same gen- 
eral direction. 

The general seventeenth and eighteenth century opinion 
Gainbiy'en concerning learned women finds fairly complete 
embodiment of | statement in contemporary comedy. The per- 
current opinion = sistence of the learned lady as a comic type 
serves incidentally as corroborative proof of the increasing at- 
tention given by women to learned pursuits, for no stage type 
remains amusing from year to year unless personages at least 
moderately correspondent to the type exist in sufficient numbers 
to count as a factor in social life. A basis of reality is necessary 
to give the type currency. But the comedy is more important 
as voicing a general critical estimate of values. A character 
does not hold its own as a comic type unless to the mass of 


446 THE LEARNED LADY 


theater-goers it presents itself as out of focus with common 
sense. A moral or social judgment is implied. The laugh that 
followed Biddy Tipkin and Polly Honeycomb and Lydia Lan- 
guish was a recognition of the absurdity involved in regulating 
real life by the rules of romance, and the underlying protest 
against too free access to fiction was quite in line with the dia- 
tribes of various grave moralists. So, too, with the learned lady. 
The comic character gained its point from the assumption on 
the part of the playwright and the audience that there was a 
fundamental incongruity between the lady and her learning. 
Learning did not belong to the lady, and when she assumed it 
she was thereby justly betrayed into all sorts of humiliations 
and absurdities. Back of every picture there was, consciously 
or unconsciously, the critical judgment. ‘Learning and ladies 
do not coalesce. Either the lady abandons the learning or the 
learning spoils the lady. 

There are two kinds of learned ladies represented in the 
comedy. In the case of young, lovely, and well-dowered girls, 
learning was but a foible. When convinced of its absurdity, 
these desirable maidens put aside their big folios and became 
the properly humble, adoring, and ignorant wives of the heroes 
whose sound good sense had shown them their folly. The un- 
pleasanter elements of the comic portraits belong to dissatisfied 
wives whose souls were still bent on amorous adventure; to ob- 
solescent ladies unwilling to confess the decay of their charms; 
to the old and the homely whom no bravery of attire and no 
battery of glances and graces could restore to the marriage 
market. To ladies of both classes Platonism is a name to con- 
jure with. All physical manifestations of love are abhorrent to 
them. The mystic union of souls is as much as the truly refined 
can tolerate. To the young learned ladies this doctrine of aus- 
terity has at first a genuine appeal, but is quickly proved im- 
practicable and fallacious. To the other ladies virtue is but a 
screen to mask their discredited charms. 

The knowledge of the learned ladies is as spurious as their 
virtue. They profess an intimate knowledge of Latin and Greek, 


SUMMARY 447 


and French seems their native tongue. They are at ease in the 
jargon of philosophical systems. They follow the telescope with 
the ardor of the Royal Society itself. Their studies are full of 
mathematical books and instruments. The scalpel and micro- 
scope lead them along the path of anatomical research. But 
in all this parade of learning there is no real scholarship. The 
ladies are pretentious and conceited, flaunting their false Latin 
and Greek before all comers, claiming to have explored the 
depths of knowledge when their short swallow-flights have 
searcely brushed the surface. 

The comedy may be said to embody the ordinary view as to 
the unsuitableness of learning for women. This implied critical 
- negation is given a positive analogue in the actual training given 
to girls. Their early education was not neglected as is shown 
by the numbers of masters and tutors provided for the young 
daughters of good families. And from six to fourteen many 
girls were sent to the numerous boarding schools for young 
misses. But whether at home or in school the teaching included 
little more than deportment, accomplishments, and housewifery. 
These were what, in the language of Mr. Verney, would render 
a girl “considerable in the eyes of God and man.” Hannah 
Wood’s school was the most advanced of these minor schools 
for girls, and Sarah Fielding’s Little Female Academy depicts 
the best that was done for younger girls. In any case educa- 
tion apparently ceased at fifteen or sixteen. 

The schools provided for girls represent what it was in general 
thought that they needed. The comedy represents the absurd- 
ity of trying to pass these limits. Confirmatory of these views 
would be many private expressions by both men and women. 
There were, of course, hundreds of intelligent men to whom any 
change in the status of women seemed hostile to the best in- 
terests of society. And there were hundreds of women who 
flouted all thoughts of learning as essentially, eternally unfemi- 
nine. The Spectator records that at a certain period in the court 
of France it was counted a mark of ill-breeding to pronounce 
hard words right and that ladies not infrequently took occasion 


448 THE LEARNED LADY 


to use such words “that they might show a Politeness in mur- 
dering them.” And the diatribes in the English feminist pam- 
phlets from Bathsua Makin to “Sophia” show how many 
women in high circles boasted of ignorance as one of their 
charms. 

But we come to quite a different state of affairs when we con- 


paearicea sider the opinions of the progressive minority. 
opinions of a The proposed schemes for higher education, 
minority 


although without immediate practical result, 
are notable indications of a new era of thought. Bathsua Ma- 
kin’s was the first formulated plan. But her effort to graft new 
fruit on the old stock resulted in a singular mixture. Her im- 
passioned desire to induct girls into the excellencies of higher 
learning was hampered in various ways. She could not lessen 
the attention paid to the accomplishments; she could not ven- 
ture to push the school age beyond sixteen; and she could not 
make her beloved linguistics compulsory. What she did accom- 
plish was not in the establishment of an ordered system. It was 
rather the impress of her tastes and advanced ideas on the 
minds of individual pupils. The girls who went from the Tot- 
tenham High Cross School to various distinguished homes in 
England had no alarmingly fluent or exact knowledge of Latin, 
Greek, or Hebrew. But they had all at least been invited to look 
within the portals of the palace of learning and some had found 
it rich and alluring. To all had come a new conception of the 
learning possible to women. Mrs. Makin’s court prestige, her 
reputation for prodigious scholastic attainments, her courage, 
originality, and independence, made her a dignified and an 
authoritative figure. It is a matter of regret that full annals of 
her school were not preserved. 

The education proposed by Dr. Hickes in his remarkable 
sermon in 1683, ten years after Mrs. Makin established her 
school, was not analyzed into details. But when he suggested 
for women seminaries of learning similar to Oxford and Cam- 
bridge with only such changes in the instruction and the regi- 
men as might be found advisable to fit them for their lives as 


SUMMARY 449 


women, and when he urged rich and childless women to make 
their wealth serve humanity by founding such colleges for 
girls, he was too far ahead of his time to meet any immediate 
practical response, or even any opposition. 

The next plan came from Mary Astell. This was a matured 
scheme. Her college was to be a sort of conventual retreat with- 
out vows and with an emphasis on the intellectual as well as 
the religious life. Publicity, college honors, degrees, were not 
thought of. There were to be no required studies, nor does she 
suggest even an orderly progression of lectures. The heteroge- 
neous character of her proposed clientéle forbade any rigidity of 
plan. Mary Astell seems to have looked about her and found 
‘many women to whom the customary régime offered no satis- 
factory place. There were widows who did not choose remar- 
Tiage, spinsters unwelcome in the homes allotted them by kin- 
ship, girls with dowries too slender to make an advantageous 
marriage probable, young heiresses subject to the too adven- 
turous pursuit of impecunious lovers and so in need of a haven 
pending marriage. All these uncodrdinated needs were to be 
met by the new institution. The plan was to provide agreeable 
surroundings wherein women could tranquilly and without hos- 
tile criticism work out their own salvation. Practical benefi- 
cence, teaching, study in various realms, religious meditation, 
were the avenues open to individual choice. To the women who 
remained permanently in the college a life of dignified achieve- 
ment was possible. Upon the young women who were destined 
to be wives and mothers in important homes would be exerted 
an influence tending to ennoble them in their domestic rela- 
tions, and the learning they had gained would prove a resource 
amidst the distractions and trials of life. The plan included too 
much, and the adjustments rendered necessary by its captivat- 
ing flexibility would have taxed any organizer to the utmost. 
Perhaps it is as well that the scheme was not put to the test of 
practice. Mary Astell’s contribution was in the idea she set 
forth and in her eloquent defense of that idea. 

It is surprising that Defoe’s plan for a woman’s college 


450 THE LEARNED LADY 


should have been coincident with Mary Astell’s, yet independ- 
ent of it. Defoe’s fertile imagination creates curious buildings 
in which to house his Academy. He evidently considers Mary 
Astell’s plan as too loose in general structure and too religious 
in tone to be practicable. He narrows his work down to such 
studies as are given in public schools. 

After Defoe we hear of no further plans for higher education. 
But the idea lingered in the minds of many. Richardson in 
Clarissa Harlowe suggests such an institution, and Lady Mary 
Wortley Montagu says that it was her youthful ambition to 
be foundress of a college. In Mrs. Centlivre’s Basset Table the 
learned young Valeria is advised to found a woman’s college in 
which the pupils shall be called ‘‘ Valerians.” The most curious 
and interesting embodiment of the scheme was that by Thomas 
Amory. The fullness and realistic precision of detail in his 
account of the “Hertfordshire Religious Retirement” were 
such as to make his heroine, the foundress, accepted as an his- 
torical personage. The fictitious narrative is, however, of es- 
pecial significance as showing the persistence of Mary Astell’s 
abortive plan. 

In complete harmony with these various schemes for giving 
women greater intellectual freedom was the attitude in many 
private homes. It is quite surprising to discover how many 
studious girls had a favorable home environment. Elizabeth 
Jocelyn’s grandfather, a distinguished bishop, conducted her 
studies. Mary North’s father “fostered her little assemblage of 
female literati.”” Lady Pakington was taught by the learned 
Sir Norton Knatchbull. Lucy Apsley’s father spurred her on to 
outdo her brothers in Latin, and Mr. Hutchinson fell in love 
with her for her poetry and learning. Dudleya North had the 
same teachers and studies as her brothers until they went to the 
University. Damaris Cudworth’s mind was her father’s joy 
and pride and Locke was her tutor. Bishop Burnet provided 
for his daughter Mary all possible opportunities in books and 
art. John Evelyn cherished the intellectual tastes of his daugh- 
ter and showed her writings and paintings with pride. Anne 


SUMMARY 451 


Baynard, Anna Hume, Elizabeth Singer, were girls whose early 
literary tendencies found paternal approval and aid. William 
Elstob gave fullest sympathy and guidance to his ambitious 
young sister, the indefessa comes of his studies. And Elizabeth 
Carter’s intellectual needs ruled the household. 

These protected home studies were not unlike the opportu- 
nities offered girls in Tudor times and had the same disadvan- 
tages. There were no ordered courses of study. The depths and 
shallows of a girl’s learning were largely dependent on the tastes 
of her father or tutor. She entered upon such a line of work as 
offered itself, prepared herself for it as she went along, and 
achieved what she could. As compensations for a training so 
desultory were the concentration and zest of the work, the un- 
disciplined ardor of the pioneer, contact with great books and 
men of well-seasoned learning. 

It is important to note that these scattered homes where the 
daughter found herself free to develop learned tastes were 
doubtless more numerous than is at first apparent. We know of 
a few such homes because of chance published records. But 
there must have been many homes where the lettered leisure 
such as we find in the Evelyn family, in Lord Winchilsea’s 
at Eastwell, and in Archbishop Secker’s at Canterbury, was 
shared in to the fullest extent by the ladies of the household. 
No daughter of the family might attain to notice as a writer, 
but the result of such reading and thinking would be a high 
level of general intelligence which might, in the mass, be of 
more significance than authorship. 

More important still as indicative of a new era is the favor 
accorded learned women by many men of high standing. The 
adulation given the Duchess of Newcastle may have been in- 
spired by her rank and wealth, but Jeremy Taylor, Cowley, and 
the Earl of Roscommon had no such reason for their homage to 
Orinda. The clergymen who gathered at Lady Pakington’s re- 
joiced in her great learning. Dryden gave to Anne Killigrew 
such praise as awaits few poets and artists. The Norths gave 
honorable public recognition of Dudleya North’s remarkable 


452 THE LEARNED LADY 


linguistic attainments. The family circle at Eastwell applauded 
Lady Winchilsea’s poems. Mrs. Blackwell’s work received for- 
mal recognition from the most learned doctors of the day. Of 
the early novel-writers Richardson is so well recognized as the 
sex’s champion, and as the champion of learned ladies in par- 
ticular, that his services need no further emphasis. Fielding’s 
satirical picture of Mrs. Western ends with the conclusion that 
‘petticoats should not meddle,” but he more than turns the 
scale by the opinions he expresses in the Prefaces to his sister’s 
books. Most men of ability preferred as companions women of 
good minds and a fair stock of ideas. Even Bishop Burnet, 
while afraid of general education, praises the intellectual en- 
dowment and learned attainments of each of his three wives. 
And Swift, though contemptuous of the race of women, for 
close comradeship chose Stella, a woman of wit, sense, and 
learning, in preference to some one of the doll or clinging-vine 
type. And his amiability, though rather too condescending, 
towards various literary ladies, may in part offset his brutal 
general statements. The fact is, nearly every woman of learned 
or literary attainments was accorded praise — even an undue 
meed of praise — from her immediate circle and from at least 
a few of her distinguished contemporaries. 

Furthermore, publication of worthy work was made a matter 
of urgency. Dr. Hickes did all in his power to bring Elizabeth 
Elstob’s Anglo-Saxon work before the learned public of his 
day, and it was he who insisted on the publication of Susanna 
Hopton’s letters. Lady Masham’s Letters of the Love of God 
were brought out only on the insistence of John Norris. Mrs. 
Cockburn’s early philosophical writings received immediate 
praise from Bishop Burnet, John Norris, and John Locke. But 
for Archbishop Secker Miss Carter’s Epictetus would have re- 
mained in manuscript. It was through Bishop Burnet’s insist- 
ence that his wife’s Meditations were published. 

And still one more debt must be recorded, for some of the 
most important books in behalf of women were written by men. 
From Gerbier to Ballard the list is an interesting one. No 


SUMMARY 453 


woman ventured on statements so astounding as those which 
Poulain de la Barre deduced from his fundamental assumption 
of the equality of the sexes. His arguments may have been but 
an academic pushing of a principle to its logical conclusion, or 
his book may even have been satirical in intent, but the English 
translation was evidently made in all seriousness and served as 
a basis for “Sophia’s”’ most audacious claims. Specific attempts 
to bring female genius into knowledge and repute were by men. 
John Duncomb’s Feminead in 1751 leads the list, and before 
1760 we have the Poems by Eminent Ladies of Bonnell and 
Thornton, the Lives by Theophilus Cibber, the exaltation of 
learned women in John Buncele, and, chief of all, the monumen- 
tal work by George Ballard. 

In summary it seems fair to say that while there was a general 
opinion adverse to the learning of women and suspicious of it, 
there were yet many men who seriously held views that would 
not sound antiquated in any modern defense of the higher edu- 
cation of women. 

. In all the discussions of plans for the intellectual training of 
women two suggestive limitations are to be paycation in 
noted. One is that nearly all men and women relation to the 
who favored the higher education did so because © 
of the advantage it would be to the Church. The Quakers recog- 
nized the right of women to speak in public because they be- 
lieved such action authorized by the Scriptures, but the freedom 
so granted did not go beyond religious topics. Susanna Wesley’s 
ministry to her husband’s parishioners was excusable only be- 
cause her teaching was in the service of the Church. And the 
clergymen of high rank who favored learned women did so be- 
cause the piety of these women would probably prove more 
advantageous if it were trained. Even Ballard put extra em- 
phasis on the ladies who read the Scriptures in Hebrew and 
Greek. And it was probably ethical rather than literary stand- 
ards that precluded any mention in his record of women such 
as Mrs. Behn, Mrs. Manley, and Mrs. Haywood. In all Bal- 
lard’s many pages I do not recall even a hint that his learned 


454 THE LEARNED LADY 


ladies could be accused of any irregularities of life or doctrine. 
And it is because women are naturally devout that Amory 
chooses learned young ladies to expound his new religion. 
The basis of Bishop Burnet’s objection to Mary Astell’s 
college was that a body of women thus set apart for learning 
might conceivably prove inimical to the Church. The isolated 
learned lady under the charge of some wise husband or father 
could presumably be guided in right paths or suppressed. But 
who could give bonds for a college of learned women? It was 
the attitude towards the Church that turned the scale against 
or in favor of higher education. In point of fact, no woman — 
not even the most profligate — wrote against religion. On the 
contrary, all women of letters — even the most profligate — 
wrote in favor of religion. Genuinely, or as a matter of conven- 
tion, they all upheld virtue and the authority of the Church. 
A second limitation is that the ultimate outcome of any 
Cue greatly increased intellectual freedom for women 
education not was but dimly descried. If women were per- 
forpeera mitted to pursue learning into remote fast- 
nesses, if they were allowed to thread their difficult way through 
the entanglements of philosophical disputations, if they were 
encouraged to look out upon the follies of life with satiric or 
reformatory intent, further steps in independence would seem 
an inevitable sequence. But such steps were not only not taken, 
they were not even foreseen. Nor did the most advanced men 
and women make any claims extending beyond the freedom to 
read, write, and think according to their own desires. Home 
duties and relationships remained unchanged. Bathsua Makin 
said that higher education was not designed to make wives self- 
assertive, but more reasonably and intelligently submissive. 
Lady Mary Wortley Montagu and Mary Astell, the two most 
advanced and independent women of their day, are at one with 
the theory of the divinely ordained headship of man. Their 
bitterness of tone contains no thought of change, no hint of 
rebellion. Women were still under the dominion of fathers 
and husbands. The difference was that these fathers and 


SUMMARY 455 


husbands were in numerous instances willing to accord a very 
much enlarged freedom. But the next step was not taken 
by virtue of which the final right of decision as to her own 
thought and action would have belonged to the woman her- 
self. 

There was, furthermore, no claim made by women for any 
part in public life. Mary Wollstonecraft’s suffrage programme 
of 1791, mild as it was, would have seemed to Mary Astell an 
incredible overturning of feminine ideals. Mary Astell and her 
congeners could not see that the putting of educational weapons 
into the hands of women was a concession carrying with it all 
later demands of feminism. The advocates of higher educa- 
tion for women were blind to the potentialities of the situation. 
There was no immediate following-up of theory into action. 
The idea of woman as a self-sufficing, self-directing individu- 
ality, responsible for her own destiny, and capable of playing 
an important part in civic and national affairs, did not come 
into clear outline until two centuries after Mary Astell’s pro- 
nunciamento. In the period before 1760 we become aware of 
a moving on the waters. We are conscious of a great stir of 
preparation as for a crisis. Many paths converge towards one 
goal, but no goal is reached. Plans and achievements and 
favorable utterances seem to halt in mid-air. 

A detailed study of the various ways in which women sought 
for fuller and richer intellectual life shows in what isolation they 
worked, with what lack of leadership, with what a depressing 
sense of the futility of their uncoérdinated efforts. The begin- 
nings of the new ideals for women were so modest and unassum- 
ing, so casual, so without self-consciousness, that at the time 
they could hardly be recognized as beginnings. Evidences of a 
new vitality appear in the retrospect as numerous and promis- 
ing, but in reality each thinker of new thoughts stood out alone, 
a solitary champion, scarcely realizing that in other parts of the 
field other champions were fighting under the same banners. 
We can now bring together many rather advanced statements 
in favor of educating girls. But these were often mere passing 


456 THE LEARNED LADY 


isolated utterances. There was nothing like an organized prop- 
aganda, no body of public opinion growing steadily in mass and 
power till it became dominant. There are hundreds of blades 
pushing up through the dark earth, but the field is never quite 
ripe for harvest. There is so much reasoning, so much able 
thought, so much sincerity of feeling and aspiration, and there 
are so many women reaching out into new mental realms, that 
a decisive revolution of opinion seems often imminent. But 
the world listens unconvinced, and in the actual affairs of life 
apparently applies the old standards. 

What was actually accomplished in the century before 1760 
was a lavish sowing of seed, a steady infiltration of new ideas, 
a breaking up of old certainties as to woman’s place in domes- 
tic and civic life, and an accumulation of examples proving 
women capable of the most varied intellectual aptitudes and 
energies. 


THE END 


BIBLIOGRAPHY 


I. BOOKS BY WOMEN BEFORE 1760 


“A.M.” Mrs. The Cook’s New Year’s Gift, Cookery refined, or The 
Lady, Gentlewoman and Servant-maid’s Companion. London, 
1697, 1700. 

Astett, Mary. Letters concerning the Love of God. London, 1695. 

— A Serious Proposal to the Ladies for the Advancement of their 
True and Greatest Interest. London, 1694. Fourth edition, 1697. 

—— Some Reflections on Marriage. London, 1700. 

— Moderation Truly Stated. London, 1704. 

— A Fair Way with Dissenters. London, 1704. 

— An Impartial Enquiry into the Causesof Rebellion and Civil War 

in this Kingdom. London, 1704. 

— The Christian Religion as Professed by a Daughter of the Church 
of England. London, 1705. 

— Bartlemy Fair or an Enquiry after Wit. London, 1709. 

“A.W.” A Continuation of Sir Philip Sidney’s Arcadia. Written by 
a young Gentlewoman, Mrs. A. W. [Anna Weamys]. London, 
1690. 

Bacon, Lapy Anne. An Apology for the Church of England. [Trans- 

- lated from the Latin treatise by Bishop Jewel.] London, 1564. 

Barser, Mrs. Mary. Poems. London, 1734. 

Barker, JANE. Poetical Recreations. ... In Two Parts. Part 1. Occa- 
sionally written by Mrs. Jane Barker. Partum. By Several Gentle- 
men of the Universities and Others. London, 1688. ; 

—— The Entertaining Novels of Mrs. Jane Barker. London, 1715, 
1719. ; 

— A Patch-Work Screen for the Ladies, or Love and Virtue Recom- 
mended. . . . By Mrs. Jane Barker, of Wilsthorp, near Stamford, 
in Lincolnshire. London, 1723. 

Brun, Mrs. ApHRA. Works. Edited by Montague Summers. Six vol- 
umes. London, 1915. 

Be, Mrs. Susanna. The Legacie of a Dying Mother to her mourn- 
ing Children. London, 1672. 

BiackweE.., Mrs. ExizanetH. A Curious Herbal containing Five 
Hundred Cuts of the most useful Plants which are now used in 
the Practice of Physic. Two volumes. London, 1739. 


460 BIBLIOGRAPHY 


Brooke, Lapy Exizasetu. Selections from the Writings of Lady 
Elizabeth Brooke in The Lady’s Monitor. London, 1828. 

Burnet, Mrs. ExizasetH. A Method of Devotion. London, 1713. 
(Third edition.) 

Bury, Mrs. Evizaseta. Diary (Published in abridged form). Bris- 
tol, 1721. 

Carter, E1izaBetH. Poems on Particular Occasions. London, 1738. 

An Examination of Pope’s Essay on Man. [Translated from the 

first treatise of Crousaz.] London, 1738. 

Sir Isaac Newton’s Philosophy Explained for the Use of the 
Ladies. In Six Dialogues on Light and Colour. Two volumes. 
London, 1739. 

— The Moral Discourses of Epictetus. Translated by Elizabeth 
Carter. Two volumes. Dutton and Company, New York, 1899. 

[First edition, 1758.] 

Poems on Several Occasions. London, 1762. 

Letters between Mrs. Elizabeth Carter and Miss Catherine Tal- 
bot. From the Year 1741 to 1770. To which are added Letters 
from Mrs. Carter to Mrs. Vesey between the Years 1763 and 1787. 
Four volumes. London, 1809. 

Crwuerr, Mrs. Evuzapetu. Malice Defeated. London, 1680. 

A Scheme for the Foundation of a Royal Hospital and raising a 
revenue of 5000/ or 60001 a year by and for the Maintenance of 
a Corporation of Skilful Midwives. London, 1687. Printed in 
Harleian Miscellany. (Park.) Vol. rv. 

CENTLIVRE, Mrs. Susanna. Works. Three volumes. London, 1761. 

Cuanpier, Mary. A Description of Bath. London, 1744. (Sixth 
edition.) 

Cuiptey, Mrs. Katuertne. The Justification of the Independent 
Churches of Christ. London, 1641. 

CuupteicH, Lapy. The Ladies’ Defence. London, 1699. 

Poems. London, 1703. : 

Essays. London, 1710. 

Cocxsurn, Mrs. CaTHEeRIne. The Works of Mrs. Cathoiah Cock- 
burn, Theological, Moral, Dramatic, and Poetical. Edited by 
Thomas Birch. Two volumes. London, 1751. 

Cotiyrer, Mrs. Mary. Felicia to Charlotte: Being Letters from a 
Young Lady in the Country to her Friend in Town. Vol. 1, 1744. 
Vol. 1. 1749. 

— A Christmas Box, Consisting of Moral Stories, adapted to 
the Capacities of Little Children and calculated to give them 
early impressions of Piety and Virtue. Two volumes. London, 
1749. 


BIBLIOGRAPHY 461 


Coutyrer, Mrs. Mary. The Death of Abel. (Translated from Gesner’s 
Abel’s Tod.) London, 1761. 

Coorrer, Mrs. Exizasetu. The Rival Widows, or The Fair Libertine. 
London, 1735. 

— The Muses Library; Or a Series of English Poetry from the Sax- 
ons to the Reign of King Charles II. Vol. 1 (all published). Lon- 
don, 1737. 

D’Anvers, Mrs. Aticta. The Humours of Oxford. London, 1691. 
Davies, Lapy Exzanor. The Restitution of Prophecy; that Buried 
Talent to be revived. By the Lady Eleanor. London, 1651. 

Davys, Mrs. Mary. The Reformed Coquet. London, 1724. 

Dexany, Mrs. Mary. The Autobiography and Correspondence of 
Mrs. Delany. Edited by Lady Llanover. First series, three vol- 
umes, 1861. Second series, three volumes, 1862. 

Estos, Exizaseta. An English-Saxon Homily on the Birthday of 
St. Gregory. Translated into Modern English with Notes. 
London, 1709. William Pickering, Leicester, 1839. 

Essay on Glory. (Translated from Mademoiselle de Scudery.) . 

—— Rudiments of Grammar for the English-Saxon Tongue. London, 
1715. 

—A Saxon Homilarium. (Only five printed at Oxford about 
1717.) 

Face, Mary. Fame’s Roule. London, 1637. 

FankuanpD, Lapy EvizasetH. The Tragedy of Mariam the Faire 
Queene of Jewry. London, 1613. Malone Society. Reprint, Ox- 
ford, 1914. 

FansHAwE, Lapy Ann. The Memoirs of Ann, Lady Fanshaw, 
1600-1672. London, 1907. 

Feit, Mrs. Marcarer. Women’s Speaking Justified Proved and 
Allowed of by the Scriptures. London, 1666. [One of ten tracts 
written 1665-68.] 

Fiewpine, Saran. The Adventures of David Simple in Search of a 
Faithful Friend. London, 1744. 

—— Familiar Letters between the Characters of David Simple. Lon- 
don, 1747. 

—— The Governess; Or the Little Female Academy. London, 1749. 
Seventh edition, 1760. 

Fiennes, Ceuia. Through England on a Side Saddle in the Time of 
William and Mary. London, 1888. 

Geran, Lapy Grace. Reliquie Gethiniane. London, 1696 (?). 

GirrarD, Lapy Marta. The Life and Correspondence (1664-1722) 
of Martha, Lady Giffard. Edited by Julia G. Lange with Pref- 
ace by Judge Parry. Allen and Sons, London, 1911. 


462 BIBLIOGRAPHY 


Guassz, Mrs. Hannan. The Art of Cookery made Plain and Bay: 
London, 1747. Ninth edition, 1759. 

Gournay, Marie DE Jars DE. L’Egalité des Hommes et des ecuetels 
Paris, 1604. 

Grizrson, Mrs. Constantia. Terence. London, 1727. 

Tacitus. London, 1730. 

Hatxert, Lapy Jane. Works. Edinburgh, 1701. 

—— Autobiography. Camden Society Publications. New Series. 
Vol. 13. 1875-76. 

Harter, Lavy Brinuiana. Letters 1638-1640. Camden Society Pub- 
lications. Vol. 58. 1853-54. 

Horton, Mrs. Susanna. Daily Devotions. London, 1673. 

Letter to Father Tuberville. In Dr. Hickes’s Controversial Let- 

ters, 1710. 

Meditations on the Six Days of Creation. London, 1717. 

— Meditations on the Life of Christ. London, 1717. 

Hume, Anna. The Triumph of Love, Chastity, and Death. (Trans- 
lated from Petrarch.) London, 1644. 


Hurcurson, Mrs. Lucy. Memoirs of the Life of Colonel Hutchinson.: 


Bell and Sons, London, 1899. 

James, Mrs. Exeanor. Vindication of the Church of England. Lon- 
don, 1687. 

Mrs. James’s Apology. London, 1694. 

Reasons humbly presented to the Lords Spiritual and Tempo- 
ral. London, 1715. 

JocELYN, ExizaBetH. The Mother’s Legacy to her Unborn Childe. 
Third edition, 1625. Reprinted, Blackwood’s, 1852. 

Jones, Mary. Poems. (In Eminent Ladies.) 

Keio, Estaer. La Proverbes de Salomon (Written in forty hands). 
1599. 

Kent, Evizaneta Grey, THE Countess or. A Choice Manuall, or 
Rare and Select Receipts in Physick and Chyrurgery. Second 
edition, 1653. A second part, The True Gentlewoman’s eight. 
reached a nineteenth edition in 1687. 

Kiiuicrew, ANNE. Poems. London, 1686. 

“Lady, A.” Essay in Defence of the Female Sex. . . . In a Letter to a 
Lady by a Lady. London, 1696. Fourth edition, 1791. 

Leap, Mrs. Jane. A Fountain of Gardens Watered by the Rivers of 
divine pleasure. Four volumes. London, 1701. 

Leapor, Mary. Poems on Several Occasions. London, 1748. 

Lennox, Mrs. CHARLOTTE. Poems. London, 1747. 

— The Life of Harriot Stuart. London, 1751. 

— The Female Quixote. London, 1752. 


BIBLIOGRAPHY 463 © 


Lennox, Mrs. Cuartorre. Shakespeare. Illustrated. London, 
1753-54. 

— Memoirs of the Countess Berci. Two volumes. London, 1756. 

Memoirs of M. de Bethune, Duke of Sully. Three volumes. 

London, 1756. 

Memoirs for the History of Madame de Maintenon. London, 

1757. 

— Henrietta. London, 1758. [Dramatized as The Sister, 1769.] 

— Brumoy’s Greek Theatre. London, 1759. 

— Sophia. Two volumes. London, 1762. 

— Euphemia. Fourvolumes. London, 1790. 

Lixcotn, THE Countess or. The Countess of Lincoln’s Nurserie. 
London, 1628. 

Major, Exizasetu. Eliza’s Babes or The Virgin’s Offerings. Lon- 

don, 1652. 

Honey on the Rod. London, 1656. 

Maxr, Mrs. Batusua. An Essay to Revive the Ancient Education 
of Gentlewomen. London, 1673. 

Manty, Mrs. Arapenta. An Essay on the Invention of Samplers. 
[Written before 1709. Published in the Works of Dr. W. King. 
Vol. 1, 1776.] 

Manty, Mrs. pe ta Riviere. The Lost Lover. 1696. 

— The Royal Mischief. 1696. 

— Secret Memoirs and Manners of Several Persons of Quality of 
Both Sexes from the New Atalantis, an Island in the Mediter- 
ranean. Four volumes. 1709. Sixth edition, 1720. 

— The Adventures of Rivella. London, 1714. 

— Lucius. London, 1717. 

— The Power of Love. In seven volumes. London, 1720. 

— A Stage-Coach Journey to Exeter. London, 1725. 

Manrretit, Lucreza. Della Nobilta ed Eccelenza della Donne e delli 
Difetti e Maneamenti degli Uomini. Venice, 1608. 

Masxam, Lapy Damarts. Discourse concerning the Love of God. 
London, 1696. 

— Occasional Thoughts in Reference to a Virtuous Christian Life. 
London, 1700. 

Masters, Mary. Poems. [In Eminent Ladies.] 

Metviite, Euizaneta. Ane Godlie Dream. 1603. [David Laing’s 
Early Metrical Tales, 1826.] 

Moncx, The Hon. Mrs. Marrnpa. Poems and Translations on Several 
Occasions. London, 1716. 

Monrtacu, Lapy Mary Worttey. The Letters and Works of Lady 
Mary Wortley Montagu. Edited by Lord Wharncliffe. Two 
volumes. Bell and Sons, 1887. 


464 BIBLIOGRAPHY 


NewcasTLE, Marcaret, Ducusss or. Philosophical Fancies. Lon- 
don, 1653. 

— Philosophical Fancies. London, 1653. 

— Poems and Fancies. London, 1653. 

— The World’s Olio. London, 1655. 

—— Philosophical and Physical Opinions. London, 1655. 

—— Nature’s Pictures drawn by Fancie’s Pencil to the Life [In- 
cluding an autobiography]. London, 1656. 

Orations. London, 1662. 

—— Plays. London, 1662, 1668. 

Sociable Letters. London, 1664. 

— Observations upon Experimental Philosophy. London, 1666. 

—— The Life of William Cavendish, Duke of Newcastle. 1667. 

Letters and Poems. 1676. 

—— A True Relation of the Birth, Breeding, and Life of Margaret 
Cavendish, Duchess of Newcastle. Written by Herself. Edited 
by Sir Egerton Brydges. Private Press of Lee Priory, 1814. 

—— The Lives of William Cavendish, Duke of Newcastle, and of his 
Wife Margaret, Duchess of Newcastle. Edited by Mark Antony 
Lower. London, 1872. 

— The Life of William Cavendish, Duke of Newcastle, to which 
is added, The True Relation of My Birth, Breeding and Life by 
Margaret, Duchess of Newcastle. Edited by C. H. Firth. Scrib- 
ner’s, 1886. 

Newcome, Mrs. Enquiry into the Evidences of the Christian Reli- 
gion. 1728. 

Nine Musss, Tur. The Nine Muses; or Poems written by as many 
Ladies on the death of the late famous John Dryden, Esq. Lon- 
don, 1700. 

OssorneE, Dorotuy. Letters from Dorothy Osborne to Sir William 
Temple, 1652-1654. Edited by E. A. Parry. Dodd, Mead and 
Co., 1888. 

Ossorne, Mrs. Saran. Political and Social Letters of a Lady of the 
Eighteenth Century. Dodd, Mead and Co., 1891. 

Parr, QUEEN CATHERINE. Queen Katherine Parre’s lamentations of 
a sinner. London, 1548. 

Putuies, Joan. Female Poems on Several Occasions. London, 1679. 

Puiuips, Mrs. KATHERINE. Poems by the most deservedly Admired 
Mrs. Katherine Philips, the Matchless Orinda. London, 1678. 

— Letters from Orinda to Poliarchus. London, 1705. 

— Selections from the Poems of Katherine Philips, “The Matchless 
Orinda.” Only 250 copies printed. J. R. Tutin, at Cottingham 
near Hull, 1904. 


a 


BIBLIOGRAPHY 465 


\ Prrxineton, Mrs. Larritta. Memoirs of Mrs. Laetitia Pilkington. 
Two volumes. London, 1748. Third edition in 1754. 

— The Celebrated Mrs. Pilkington’s Jests. London, 1751. 

Primrose, Lapy Diana. A Chain of Pearl. London, 1630. 

Ricumonp, Marcaret, Countess or. The mirrour of golde for the 
sinfull soule. London, 1509. 

Rowe, Mrs. E1izasern. Poems on Several Occasions, written by 
Philomela. London, 1696. 

— Miscellaneous Works in Prose and Verse. Two volumes. London, 
1739. 

Russeit, Racuet, Lavy. The Letters of Rachel, Lady Russell. Two 
volumes. London, 1853. First edition, 1773. 

Scourman, ANNA VAN. De ingenii muliebris ad doctrinam et meliores 
litteras aptitudine. Leyden, 1641. [Translated into English by 
Clement Barksdale as The Learned Maid, or Whether a Maid 
may be a Scholar. London, 1659.] 

Scott, Mrs. Saran. Millenium Hall. By a Gentleman on his Travels. 
London, 1762, 1764. 

Srymour, ANNE, Marcaret, AND JANE. A Century of Distichs on 
the Death of Queen Margaret of Navarre. London, 1550. 

Snarp, Mrs. Janz. The Midwives’ Book, Or The Whole Art of Mid- 
wifery discovered. London, 1671, 1690. 

Smpnry, Mary. Translation of Du Plessis Mornay’s Discours de la 
Vie et de la Mort. London, 1593. 

—— Translation of Garnier’s Marc Antonie. London, 1592. 

— Metrical Version of the Psalms. (First printed by Robert Trip- 
hook in 1823.) 

“Sopuia PAMPHLETS”: Woman not Inferior to Man. ... By Sophia, 
a Person of Quality. 1739. Woman’s superior Excellence over 
Man, or a Reply to the author of a late treatise entitled Man 
Superior to Woman. 1740. The three pamphlets published as 
Beauty’s Triumph, 1757. 

Tatsot, CATHARINE. The Works of Miss Catharine Talbot. Edited 
by Miss Elizabeth Carter. London, 1770. 

— The Works of the late Miss Catharine Talbot. Edited by the 
Rev. Montagu Pennington. London, 1812. 

Tuomas, Mrs. Exrzapeta. Poems. London, 1722, 1726, 1727. 

— Pylades and Corinna. Two volumes. London, 1731. 

Warwick, Mary Bortz, THe Countess or. Diary. [The portion 
i 1666 to 1672 published by Religious Tract Society. 
1847. 

—— Some Specialities in the Life of M. Warwicke. Percy Society 
Publications. Vol. xx. 


466 BIBLIOGRAPHY 


WEsTON, ExizABETH JANE (or Joan). Works. (Printed by Georg Mar- 
tin von Baldhoven at Frankfort-on-the-Oder. 1602.) 

Waarton, Lavy Anne. Verses by the Excellent Poetess, Mrs. Whar- 
ton. London, 1688. 

Waite, Mrs. ExizaBetu. The Experiences of God’s gracious dealing 
with Mrs. Elizabeth White. London, 1671. 

WINcHILSEA, ANNE, CountEss oF. The Poems of Anne, Countess of 
Winchilsea. Edited by Myra Reynolds. The University of Chi- 
cago Press, 1903. 

Wooutry, Mrs. Hannan. The Queen-like Closet. 1696. (Eleventh 
edition.) 

Wrortu, Lapy Mary. The Countess of Montgomerie’s Urania. Lon- 
don, 1621. 


II. GENERAL BIBLIOGRAPHY 


Actanp, J. E. Little Gidding and its Inmates in the time of King 
Charles I. Society for the Promotion of Christian Knowledge, 
London, 1903. 

AppIson, JosEPH. Sir Roger de Coverley Papers. Ed. W. H. Wills. 
Harper and Brothers, 1878. 

Aitkin, Grorcs. The Life of Richard Steele. Two volumes. London, 
1889. 

ALEXANDER, Witt1AM. The History of Women from the earliest an- 
tiquity; giving some account of almost every interesting par- 
ticular concerning that Sex, among all nations ancient and 
modern. Two volumes. London, 1779. 

Amory, THomas. Memoirs of Several Ladies of Great Britain. Two 
volumes. London, 1755. 

—— The Life of John Buncle. London. Vol. 1, 1756; Vol. m, 1766. 

Armenian Nunnery at Litile Gidding. Anon. London, 1641. 

AscuaM, Roger. The Scholemaster. Ed. John B. Mayor. London, 
1863. 

\ Asuton, Jonn. Social Life in the Reign of Queen Anne. Chatto and 
Windus, 1899. 

Ausrey, Joun. Brief Lives, chiefly of Contemporaries set down by 
John Aubrey, between the Years 1669 & 1696. Edited from the 
Author’s MSS. by Andrew Clark. Two volumes. Clarendon 
Press, 1898. 

Baker, Davin Erskine. Biographia Dramatica. Three volumes. 
London, 1812. 

Batpwyn, Mr. The New Help to Discourse. London, 1619. 

-. BALLARD, GEORGE. Memoirs of Several Ladies of Great Britain who 


BIBLIOGRAPHY 467 


have been Celebrated for their Writings or Skill in the Learned 
Languages, Arts and Sciences. Oxford, 1752. Second edition, 
1775. 

BarkKsDALE, CLEMENT. Letter touching a College of Maids or a Vir- 
gin Society. London, 1675. 

Barnarp, Mr. An Historical Character, relating to the holy and ex- 
emplary Life of the Lady Elizabeth Hastings. London, 1742. 

Barre, Pounain DELE. Del’ Egalité des deux Sexes, 1673. Translated 
by “A. L.” in 1677 as The Woman as Good as the Man. 

Beprorb, Jesst£. Social Life under the Stuarts. Richards, London, 

1900. 

Home Life under the Stuarts, 1603-1640. Dutton and Co., New 
York, 1903. 

—— English Children of the Olden Time. Methuen, London, 1907. 

Bericuton, Mr. The Ladies Diary: or the Woman’s Almanack, Con- 
taining many Delightful and Entertaining Particulars peculiarly 
adapted for the Diversion of the Fair Sex. 1603-23. 

Beuuamy, Dantet. The Young Lady’s Miscellany; or, Youth’s inno- 
cent and rational amusement. To which is prefixed a short essay 
on the art of pronunciation and the great advantage arising from 
an early practice of it in publick. London, 1723. 

Bibliographica. Three volumes. Kegan Paul, London, 1895-97. 

BicxerstaFFE, Isaac. Lionel and Clarissa. 1768. 

Biographia Britannica. Ed. Andrew Kippis. London, 1778-93. 

Biographium Femineum. The Female Worthies: or memoirs of the 
most illustrious Ladies of all Ages and Nations. Two volumes. 
London, 1766. 

Brrcu, THomas. The Heads of Illustrious Persons of Great Britain. 
Two volumes. 1752. 

Brirca, Una. Anna van Schurman: Artist: Scholar: Saint. Longmans, 
Green and Co., 1909. 

Biacksourne, E. Owens. See Casey, Elizabeth. 

Bouttine, Wizt14mM. Woman in Italy. Brentano, 1910. 

Bourne, Henry Ricnarp Fox. Life of John Locke. Two volumes. 
London, 1876. 

Brattawait, Ricnarp. The English Gentleman. 1633. (2d edition.) 

Brooke, Henry. Brookiana. Two volumes. Ed. C. H. Wilson. Lon- 
don, 1804. 

Bunyan, JoHN. Book for Boys and Girls. 1690. 

CampPBELL, THomas. Specimens of the British Poets. Seven volumes. 
1819. 

Cannon, Mary Acnes. The Education of Women during the Re- 
naissance. Washington, D.C., 1916. 


468 BIBLIOGRAPHY 


Carter, Toomas. Nicholas Ferrar, his Household and Friends. Lon- 
don, 1892. 

Casty, EvizaBetu. Illustrious Irishwomen. Two volumes. 1887. 

CASTIGLIONE, BALDASSARE. The Book of the Courtier. Translated 
from the Italian by L. E. Opdycke. C. Scribner’s Sons, 1903. 

CHALMERS, ALEXANDER. General Biographical Dictionary. Thirty- 
two volumes. London, 1812-17. 

Cuampers, Mary C. E. The Life of Mary Ward. Ed. by H. J. Cole- 
ridge. Two volumes. London, 1882. 

Ci1psBer, Cottey. Dramatic Works. London, 1760. 

Crsser, THEOPHILUS. An Account of the Lives of the Poets of Great 
Britain and Ireland. Four volumes. London, 1753. 

CxiarK, Apam. A Bibliographical Dictionary . . . including the Whole 
of the Fourth Edition of Dr. Harwood’s View of the Classics. Six 
volumes. Liverpool, 1802. 

Cuark, E1iza. Susanna Wesley. Roberts Brothers, Boston, 1891. 

CuarK, T. E. S. and Foxcrort, H. C. The Life of Bishop Burnet. 
University Press, Cambridge, 1907. 

Ciayton, ELLEN. See Needham, Mrs. Eleanor. 

Cocxsrr, Epwarp. England’s Penman. London, 1679. 

Co.eripGE, Harttey. The Worthies of Yorkshire and Lancashire. 
London, 1836. 

Cotman, GrorcE. Dramatic Works. Four volumes. London, 1777. 

ConcrREvVE, Witu1am. Complete Plays of William Congreve. Ed. 
A. C. Ewald. Mermaid Series, 1903. 

CostEetto, Louisa Stuart. Memoirs of Eminent Englishwomen. 
Four volumes. Bentley, London, 1844. 

Courtenay, THomas P. Memorials of the Life, Works, and Corre- 
spondence of Sir William Temple. Two volumes. Longmans. 
1836. 

Coventry, Francis. History of Pompey the Little; or the Life and 
Adventures of a Lap-Dog. London, 1751. (In Mrs. Barbauld’s 
British Novelists, 1820.) 

Craik, Henry. The Life of Jonathan Swift. Two volumes. Macmil- 
lan, 1894. 

DarreEwL, Witt1aM. The Gentleman Instructed in the Conduct of a 
Virtuous and Happy Life. London, 1723. (Eighth edition.) 
DayEnport, Cyrin. “‘The Bindings at Little Gidding.” In Bibliogra- 

phica, vol. 11. 

Deror, Dantet. An Essay on Projects. 1698. 

De Quincey, THomas. Works. Ed. by David Masson. Fourteen 
volumes. A. and C. Black, Edinburgh, 1890. 

Dosson, Austin. Henry Fielding. Macmillan, 1883. 


BIBLIOGRAPHY 469 


Donstey, Rosert. Collection of Poems in Six Volumes by Several 
Hands. London, 1758. (Fifth edition.) 

Doran, Dr. A Lady of the Last Century [Mrs. Elizabeth Montagu] 
... with a Chapter on Blue Stockings. Bentley, London, 1873. 
Droummonp, Rosert. Erasmus, his Life and Character. Two volumes. 

‘London, 1873. 

Dryben, Joun. Works. Ed. by Sir Walter Scott and George Saints- 
bury. Eighteen volumes. Edinburgh, 1882-93. 

Dotncoms, Joun. Feminead; or Female Genius. London, 1751. 

Dotnoon, Jonn. The Character of the Rt Hon the Lady Letice, Vis- 
countess Falkland in a Letter tothe Lady Morison. [In Wilford’s 
Memorials.] 

Downton, Joun. The Ladies Dictionary; Being a General Entertain- 
ment for the Fair-Sex. London, 1694. 

—— The Life and Errors of John Dunton. London, 1705. 

Dyce, ALEXANDER. Specimens of British Poetesses. London, 1827. 

EckensteIn, Lina. Woman under Monasticism. Cambridge, 1896. 

English Churchwomen of the Seventeenth Century. Derby, Mozely and 
Sons, 1845. 

Erasmus, Destperivs. Select Colloquies of Erasmus. Edited by Mey- 
rick Whitcomb. University of Pennsylvania, 1902. 

Evetyn, Jonn. Numismata: A Discourse of Medals. London, 
1697. 

— The Life of Mrs. Godolphin. Edited by E. W. Harcourt of Nune- 
ham Park. Sampson Lord and Co., London, 1888. 

— Diary and Correspondence of John Evelyn. Edited by W. Bray. 
Four volumes. G. Bell and Sons, 1902-07. 

Farquuar, Grorce. The Best Plays of George Farquhar. Edited by 
William Archer. Mermaid Series, 1906. 

Frucrre, Lton. Les femmes poéies an XVI’ siecle. Didier et C’, 
Paris, 1860. 

Fiexp, Mrs. Louise Frances. The Child and His Book: Some Ac- 
count of the History and Progress of Children’s Literature in 
England. Wells, Gardner, Darton and Co., 1892. 

Fretprnc, Henry. Tom Jones. London, 1749. 

FitzGERALD, Percy. A New History of the English Stage. Two vol- 
umes. Tinsley Brothers, London, 1882. 

Four Hundred New sorts of Birds . . . for all sorts of Gentlewomen and 
School-Mistresses Works. London, 1671. 

Gausssen, Atice C. C. A Woman of Wit and Wisdom; A Memoir 
of Elizabeth Carter. E. P. Dutton and Co., 1906. 

Gay, Joun. The Works of Mr. John Gay. Five volumes. London, 
1772. 


470 BIBLIOGRAPHY 


Genest, Joon. Some Account of the English Stage from the Restora- 
tion in 1660 to 1830. Ten volumes. Bath, 1832. 

Gentleman’s Magazine, The. London, Jan. 1731-Sept. 1907. [Three 
hundred and two volumes.] 

Gerrprer, CHar.es. Elogium Heroinum. The Ladies Vindication; or, 
The Praise of Worthy Women. London, 1651. 

Giupon, Cuarues. Letters and Essays. London, 1694. 

A Comparison between the Two Stages. 1702. 

GoprreEy, E1izaBEeTH. See Bedford, Jessie. 

Gossr, Epmunp. Seventeenth Century Studies. K. Paul, Trench and 

Co., London, 1885. 

Gossip in a Library. Coryell and Co., New York, 1891. 

GRANGER, JAMES. Biographical History of England. Four volumes. 
London, 1779. [Noble’s Continuation, London, 1806.] 

Guardian, The. London, 1713. 

Guizot, F. P. Love in Marriage; a historical study: Lady Rachel 
Russell. Translated by M. O. Stevens. New York, 1865. 

Hasineton, Wiiu1AM. Castara. The third edition of 1640; edited and 
collated with the earlier ones of 1634, 1635. A. Constable and 
Co., Westminster, 1895. 

Haney, J. L. German Literature in England before 1790. [Americana 
Germanica, Vol. tv, pp. 180-154.] 

Hate, Mrs. Saran JosepHa. Woman’s Record. New York, 1872. 
(Third edition.) 

Hawesins, Sir Joun. Life of Samuel Johnson. London, 1787. 

Hawkins, R. L. French Learned Ladies. [Modern Language Notes, 
vol. 22, p. 243.] 

Hays, Mary. Female Biography; or Memoirs of Illustrious and Cele- 
brated Women of all Ages and Countries. Three volumes. Lon- 
don, 1803. Philadelphia, 1807. 

Haywarp, Tuomas. The British Muse, or A Collection of Thoughts, 
Moral, Natural and Sublime, of our English Poets: Who flour- 
ished in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries. Three vol- 
umes. London, 1738. 

Hearne, Tuomas. Remarks and Collections of Thomas Hearne. Ten 
volumes. Printed for Oxford Historical Society. 1885-1915. 
Hicxes, Grorce. A Sermon preached at the Church of St. Bridget on 

Easter Sunday. London, 1684. 

— Instructions for the Education of a Daughter. Translated from 
Fénelon’s Traité de V éducation des filles (1688). London, 1721. 

— A Collection of Controversial Letters. London, 1710. 

Hitt, Grorctana. Women in English Life. Two volumes. Bentley 
and Son, London, 1896. 


BIBLIOGRAPHY 471 


Hueues, Heten Sapp. An Early Romantic Novel. Journal of Eng- 
lish and Germanic Philology. Vol. xv, pp. 564-597. 

— Mary Mitchell Collyer: a Romanticist of the Mid-Century. 
[Unpublished manuscript.] 

Hume, Atexanper. Hymns or Sacred Songs. 1599. [Scottish Text 
Society, 1902.] 

IncuBap, Mrs. E1vizapera. The British Theatre. Twenty-five vol- 
umes. London, 1806-09. 

Jacos, Gites. An Historical Account of the Lives and Writings of 
our most considerable English Poets. Two volumes. London, 
1724. 

Janeway, James. A Token for Children. London, 1671. Part nm, 
1672. [Frequently reprinted.] 

Jounson, CHARLES. The Generous Husband. London, 1711. 

JOHNSTONE, Grace. Leading Women of the Restoration. London, 
1891. 

Jonson, Brn. Epicoene, or The Silent Woman. Edited by Aurelia 
Henry. Holt and Co., 1906. 

JuNcKER, Curistian. Centuria Foeminarum. Leipsic, 1692. 

Kavanaea, Junta. English Women of Letters. Two volumes. Lon- 
don, 1863. 

Kzats, Jonn. Letters to his Family and Friends. Edited by Sidney 
Colvin. Macmillan, 1891. 

Knicut, Mrs. Heten C. Lady Huntington and Her Friends. Amer- 
ican Tract Society, 1853. 

Ladies’ Calling, The. By the Author of The Whole Duty of Man. Lon- 
don, 1673. 

Ladies’ Diary, The. London, 1708-26. 

Ladies’ Dictionary, The. London, 1694. 

Lady’s Drawing Room, The. London, 1748. 

Laeno, Isaporo pEL. Women of Florence. Translated by Mary 
Steegman. Chatto and Windus, 1907. 

Lez, Francis. The Last Hours of Jane Lead by an Eye and Ear Wit- 
ness. London, 1704. 

Lounssury, THomas R. Studies in Chaucer. Three volumes. Har- 
per, 1892. 

Lownpes, Wiii1aM Tuomas. The Bibliographer’s Manual of English 
Literature. Six volumes. Bell and Daldy, London, 1863. 

Lutuer, Martin. Table Talk. Translated and Edited by William 
Hazlitt, London, 1857. 

LytTLeTon, Lorp. Advice to a Lady, 1731. 

Macautay, T.B. Sir William Temple. Edinburgh Review, October, 
1888. 


A72 BIBLIOGRAPHY 


Matcorm, James P. Anecdotes of the Manners and Customs of Lon- 
don in the Eighteenth Century. Two volumes, London, 1810. 

Mawnnine, ANNE. The Household of Sir Thomas More. Scribner, 
1852. 

MarsHatn, Emma. A Haunt of Ancient Peace. Memoirs of Mr. 
Nicholas Ferrar’s House at Little Gidding. A Story. Tauchnitz, 
1897. 

Mary Satome, Motruer. Mary Ward, a Foundress of the Seven- 
teenth Century. London, 1901. 

Mason, Joun. A Little Catechism with Little Verses for Little Chil- 
dren. London, 1755. [Eighth edition.] 

Mayne, Jasper. The City Match. London, 1639. 

Mayor, J. E. B. Nicholas Ferrar. Two Lives. Cambridge, 1855. 

Mites, Duptxy. The Influence of Moliére on Restoration Comedy. 
Columbia University Press, 1910. 

Modern Miracles, Visions and Revelations. [On Mrs. Jane Lead.] British 
Quarterly Review, 1873. 

Mo.tere, J. B. P. Les Précieuses. Paris, 1659. 

Les Femmes Savantes. Paris, 1672. 

Monroet, Pau. Cyclopedia of Education. Five volumes. Mac- 
millan, 1911-13. 

Moors, Epwarp. Fables for the Female Sex. London, 1744. Third 
edition, illustrated, 1766. 

Morz, Cresacre. The Life of Sir Thomas More. London, 1726. 

Morean, Cuar.ottTe EK. The Rise of the Novel of Manners. Colum- 
bia University Press, 1910. 

Mozans, H. J. See Zahm, J. A. 

Mutcaster, Ricuarp. Positions. Longmans, Green and Co., Lon- 
don, 1888. 

Morpuy, Artuur. The Apprentice. London, 1756. 

Neepuam, Mrs. ELeanor. English Female Artists. London, 1876. 

New and General Biographical Dictionary. London, 1761-62. New 
edition in fifteen volumes, 1798. 

Newsery, JouHn. The Little Pretty Pocket Book. London, 1744. 

Newcastle, Marcaret, Ducuess or. Letters and Poems in Honour 
of the Incomparable Princess, Margaret, Dutchess of Newcastle. 
In the Savoy. 1676. 

New Tea Table Miscellany; or bagatelles for the amusement of the fair sex. 
London, 1753. 

Nicnots, JoHn. Anecdotes of William Bowyer, Printer. London, 
1782. 

—— Literary Anecdotes of the Eighteenth Century. Nine volumes. 
London, 1812-15. 


BIBLIOGRAPHY 473 


Nicuots, Jonn. Illustrations of the Literary History of the Eight- 
eenth Century. [Begun in 1817 and completed by John Bowyer 
Nichols in 1858.] 

Norta, Rocsrr. The Lives of the Norths. Edited by A. Jessup. Three 
volumes. Bohn Library, 1890. 

Notes and Queries. Begun 1849. Bell and Daldy, London. 

Otpys, Witi1am. The Diary of William Oldys. Notes and Queries. 
Second Series, vol. 11, pp. 101, 121, 141. 

Oversury, Sir THomas. Characters. London, 1614. 

Paston, Grorce. See Symonds, Emily. 

Prckarp, G. P. Memoirs of the Life of Nicholas Ferrar. London, 
1790. 

Pennant, THomas. Tour in Scotland. London, 1790. 

Prpys, SAMUEL. Diary and Correspondence. Edited by Lord Bray- 
brooke. Six volumes. London, 1875-79. 

Paitiires, Epwarp. Theatrum Poetarum Anglicanorum. London, 1675. 

Pirxineton, Matturew. Dictionary of Painters. London, 1857. 

Piicer, Grore. Miss Sarah Fielding als Romanschriftstellerin. Baut- 
zen, 1898. 

PuiomtTre, Dean. The Life of Bishop Kerr. Two volumes. London, 
1888. 

Porr, ALEXANDER. Works. Edited by Elwin and Courthope. Ten 
volumes. J. Murray. London, 1889. 

Powszt1, Tomas. Tom of All Trades, 1631. New Shakspeare Society 
Publications, Series vi, no. 2. 

Potwam, Emity James. The Lady. Sturgis and Walton. New York, 
1910. 

PurrennamM, Grorce. The Arte of English Poesy. London, 1589. 

Reep, Bertua. The Influence of Salomon Gesner upon English Lit- 
erature. German American Annals. Vol. vu, 1905. 

Reynoips, Myra. External Nature in English Poetry between Pope 
and Wordsworth. Second edition. University of Chicago Press, 
1909. 

Ricuarpson, SamuEen. Works. Edited by Leslie Stephen. Twelve 
volumes. H. Sotheran and Co. London, 1883. 

Rost, Grorce Hucu. New General Biographical Dictionary. Twelve 
volumes. 1857. 

Savitz, Grorce [Marquis of Halifax]. The Lady’s New Year’s Gift: 
or, Advice to a Daughter, 1688. In Complete Works of George 
Savile, with Introduction by Walter Raleigh. Clarendon Press, 
Oxford, 1912. 

Scuirr, Marto. La Fille d’alliance de Montaigne: Marie de Gournay. 
Paris, 1910. 


ATA BIBLIOGRAPHY 


SHADWELL, THomas. The Sullen Lovers. London, 1669. 

— Bury-Fair. London, 1689. 

—— The Scowrers. London, 1690. 

SHerman, Ricuarp BrinstEy. The Major Dramas of Richard 
Brinsley Sheridan. Edited by G. H. Nettleton. Ginn and Com- 
pany, 1906. 

Surrzey, J. The Illustrious History of Women. 1686, 1702. 

SHortTHovusE, J. Henry. John Inglesant. New York, 1887. 

Smitu, Frorence. Mary Astell. Columbia University Press, 1916. 

Soutury, Roprert. Specimens of the Later English Poets. Three 
volumes. London, 1807, 1811. 

Spectator, The. Eight volumes. Scribner’s Sons, 1897. 

SpPENcE, JosEPH. Anecdotes, Observations, and Characters. London, 
1820. 

Sprint, Jonn. The Bride-woman’s Counsellor; containing the Whole 
Duty of a Married Woman towards her Husband. London, 
1699. 

Srarnrortu, A.J. Catalogue of British and American Poetesses. Lon- 
don, 1867. 

STtAnciMarER, Karu. Mrs. Jane Barker. Berlin, 1906. 

SrEELz, Ricuarp. Complete Plays of Richard Steele. Edited by G. A. 
Aitkin. Mermaid Series. 

— The Ladies Library. Three volumes. London, 1714. 

StricKLAND, AGNES. Lives of the Queens of England. Twelve vol- 
umes. London, 1840-49. 

Srrrpe, Jonn. The Life and Acts of John Whitgift. Three volumes. 
Oxford, 1822. 

Swirt, JonatHan. Works. Edited by Sir Walter Scott. Nineteen 
volumes. Bickers and Son, London, 1883-84. 

Symonps, Emity Morse. Little Memoirs of the Eighteenth Century. 
Dutton and Co., New York, 1901. 

—— Side Lights on the Georgian Period. Methuen and Co., 1902. 

—— Lady Mary Wortley Montagu and her Times. Putnam’s, 1907. 

Tatler, The. Edited by George Aitkin. Four volumes. London, 1898. 

Trurorp, Joun. The Life of John Wesley. Eaton and Mains, New 
York, 1899. 

Term Catalogues. 1668-1709 A.D. Edited by Professor Edward Arber. 
Three volumes. Privately printed by Professor Arber. London, 
1903-06. 

Tuomas, Epwarp. Feminine Influence on the Poets. John Lane Com- 
pany, New York, 1911. 

TuoresBy, Ratpx. The Diary and Correspondence of Ralph 
Thoresby. Two volumes. London, 1830. 


BIBLIOGRAPHY 4V5 


Tuorzspy, Ratpx. Letters of Eminent Men addressed to Ralph 
Thoresby, F.R.S. Two volumes. London, 1832. 

Urnam, A. H. Mary Hutchinson and the Duchess of Newcastle. 
Anglia, vol. 36. 

Mary Astell as a Parallel for Richardson’s Clarissa. Modern 
Language Notes, vol. 28, 1913. 

— English Femmes Savantes at the End ‘of the Seventeenth Cen- 
tury. Journal of English and Germanic Philology, vol. 12, no. 2. 

Vansrucu, Sir JoHn. Select Plays of Sir John Vanbrugh. Edited by 
A. E. H. Swain. Mermaid Series. 

Verney, Marcaret M. Memoirs of the Verney Family. Four vol- 
umes. Longmans Green and Co., 1899. 

Verney Family, Letiers and Papers of. Edited by John Bruce. Camden 
Society Publications, nos. 5 and 6. London, 1853. 

Vives, Juan Luts. De Institutione Foeminae Christianae. 1523. Trans- 

lated by Richard Hyrd as The Instruction of a Christian Woman. 

De Ratione Studi. 1524. 

VetTER, THEopor. Die géttliche Rowe. Zurich, 1894. 

Watxer, Dr. The Virtuous Woman found and her loss bewailed. 
1678, 1687. 

Wa ker, Joun. Letters of Eminent Persons. Two volumes. London. 
1813. 

Wa.po.e, Horace. Royal and Noble Authors. London, 1759. 

— Anecdotes of Painting in England. Five volumes. London, 1782. 

— Letters of Horace Walpole. Nine volumes. R. Bentley and Son, 
London, 1891. 

Watsu, Marte Donsean. A City of Learned Women. The Catholic 
World, 1902. 

Watsa, Wit11am. Dialogue concerning Women, being a Defence of 
the Sex. London, 1691. 

Warp, Ricuarp. Life and Letters of Henry More. London, 1710. 

Warson, Foster. Mrs. Bathsua Makin and the Education of Gentle- 
women. In Atalanta, July, 1895. 

Vives and the Renascence Education of Women. Longmans, 

Green and Co., 1912. 

Warts, Isaac. Divine and Moral Songs for Children. London, 1720. 

Wess, Marta. The Fells of Swarthmore Hall. London, 1867. 

—— The Penns and Penningtons of the Seventeenth Century. Lon- 
don, 1867. 

Wes ey, Joun. The Heart of John Wesley’s Journal. Edited by P. L. 
Parker. Fleming Revell, 1903. 

Waeeter, Erne, Roat. Famous Blue Stockings. John Lane, 
1910. 


476 BIBLIOGRAPHY 


WuELER, Sir GEorcr. A Protestant Monastery or Christian Oecono- 
mics. London, 1698. 

Warcuer, G. F. The Life and Romances of Mrs. Eliza Haywood. 
University of Columbia Press, 1915. 

WitForp, Joun. Memorials and Characters. London, 1741. 

Wriu1ams, Jane. The Literary Women of England. London, 1861. 

Wincuester, C. T. The Life of John Wesley. Macmillan, 1906. 

WinstTaNn.ey, Witi1am. Lives of the Most Famous English Poets. 
London, 1687. 

“W.M.” Female Wits. 1697. 

Watton, Witi1am. Ancient and Modern Learning. London, 1697. 

Wricut, THomas. The Female Vertuosos. London, 1693. 

Wricut, THomas. Womankind in Western Europe. London, 1869. 

Yorkshire, Victoria History of the County of. Edited by William Page. 
Three volumes. Constable, London, 1907. 

Youne, Frances Berxetny. Mary Sidney, Countess of Pembroke. 
D. Nutt, London, 1912. 

ZauM, JoHN AucustTiInE. Woman in Science. D. Appleton and Com- 
pany, New York, 1913. 


O 
eS cf) ea is 
w ae 4 i ht 
Sabet) re) SOR as : 
Weigh iy atl A: Da: Lae ee 
oe TOR eG 
pean 2 ih 
re eh 4% 
wAN e 
ne i 
p’ Se 
ep 
5 
A 
pas ] , ae " re ¥ a 
vez, ee ps eee. : dat 
ae .n q J . ‘ 
; ‘ Gy + ih) oe Sak 2 pn oa 
‘ Meteors, > co eF BHO d , 
4S i ha obs sf = 
be Th Meee hes & ni 5 a 
mt Viken e., bs x! of iat) “Ree, Re 0 Whe 
4 r + »i* « 
ie ie RRR Sas aes Pot babes 
4 Horan Abie A’, 
‘il ri 


INDEX 


Abbot and the Learned Woman, The, | ‘‘ Astrea,” 106, 180, 160, 209. See 
12 Behn, Mrs 


Abel, The Death of, 232 
Abels, Der Tod, 232 
Academia: or the Humours of Ozford, 


145 
Actresses, 81-84, 433 
Adams, Eleanor N., 176 
Addison, Joseph, 174, 437, 444 
Adventures of Rivella, 209 
Advice to a Daughter, 324, 326 
sop, 387-88 
Agnes de Castro, 105 
Aitkin, George, 232 
Alexander, William, 423 
Algarotti, 256 
“A. M.,” Mrs., 92 
Amory, Thomas, 167, 367-71, 422, 
450 


Amours of Bosvil and Galesia, 162, 
163, 164, 165 

Ane Godlie Dreame, 21 

Anecdotes of Painting, 84 

Anglia, 74 

Anglo-Sazron Grammar, 176-79 

Anne, Countess of Dorset, Pembroke, 
and Montgomery, 32-33 

Apology, Mrs. James’s, 103 

Apology for the Church of England, An, 
103 


“ Arabella,” 411-12 

Arbuthnot, John, 393 

“ Ardelia,” 139, 152, 444. See Winchil- 
sea, Lady 

Armenian Nunnery, The, 41 

Art of Cookery, The, 92 

Arte of English Poesie, The, 18 

Arundel, Daughters of the Earl of, 13 

Arundel, Mary, Countess of, 14 

Ascham, Roger, 14, 426 

Ashton, John, 259, 260, 263 

Askew, Ann, 113, 326 

“* Aspasia,” 121 

Astell, Mary, 35, 100, 101, 111, 200, 
246, 291, 297-305, 311, 313, 341, 
347, 350, 370, 442, 443, 444, 450, 
454, 455 


Athene Ozxoniensis, 140, 190 
Aubrey, John, 20, 21, 22, 54, 421 


Bacon, Lady, 13, 23 

Bailey's Dictionary, 217 

Ballard, George, 5, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 
16, 18, 31, 35, 67, 77, 119, 140, 178, 
179, 181, 185, 294, 252, 353, 354— 
65, 366, 421, 422, 452, 453. 

Barber, Mrs. Mary, 218-22, 224, 251 

Barker, Miss Jane, 161-65, 262, 434, 
437, 439 

Barker, Mrs. Jane. Ein Beitrag zur 
Englischen Literaturgeschichte, 161 

Barksdale, Clement, 273 

Barnard, Mr., 123 

Barnes (or Berners), Juliana, 4 

Barre, Poulain de la, 286-90 

Basset Table, The, 389-91 

Bath, A Description of, 251 

Baynard, Anne, 144-45, 451 

Beale, Mary, 84-85, 88, 433 

Bedford, Lady, 28, 29, 433 

Behn, Mrs. Aphra, 129-31, 134, 136, 
326, 366, 378-79, 424, 431, 436, 437, 


453 

Beighton, Mr., 327 

Bell, Mrs. Susanna, 95 

Bellamy, Daniel, 264-67 

Betterton, Mrs., 82, 83 

Bevis of Hamtoun, Sir, 3 

Bibliographica, 42 

Bickerstaff, 398-99 

“Biddy Tipkin,” 403-09, 418-19, 446 

Biographia Britannica, 84, 423 

Biographia Dramatica, 136, 188 

Biographium Femineum, 32, 145, 368, 
422 

Birch, Thomas, 110, 421 

Birch, Una, 271 

Blackwell, Mrs. Elizabeth, 185-87, 
425, 431, 435, 452 

Blagge, Mrs. Margaret, 428, 440, 444. 
See Mrs. Godolphin 

Blake, William, 268 


480 


Bland, Mrs., 160-61, 365 

Blount, Martha, 350 

Boarding-schools for Girls, 258-68 

Bohemia, Princess of, 26 

Bold Stroke for a Wife, A, 134 

Book for Boys and Girls, 89, 435 

Boulting, William, 4 

Bourne, Henry, 102 

Bovy, Mrs. Catherine, 118, 119-20, 
124, 435 

Bowyer, Anecdotes of, 103, 104, 180, 
187, 193, 243 

Bracegirdle, Anne, 82, 83 

Bradshaigh, Lady, 338-41 

Brathwait, Richard, 24 

Breton, Nicholas, 22 

Brief Lives, 20, 21, 54, 421 

Brightland, John, 177 

British Muse, The, 190 

British Quarterly Review, 114 

Broadstreet, Anne, 326 

Brooke, Lady Elizabeth, 93, 443, 444 

Brooke, Henry, 223 

Brooke, Mrs., 352 

Brookiana, 223 

Bruce, James, 187 

Brumoy’s Greek Theatre, 135, 242 

Brydges, Sir Egerton, 53 

Buckingham, Duchess of, 126 

Buncle, The Life of John, 167, 234, 
367, 368, 453 

Bunyan, John, 89, 435 

' Burleigh, Lady, 12 

Burnet, Mrs. Elizabeth, 98 

Burnet, George, 107, 108 

Burnet, Gilbert, 144, 145, 196, 197, 
350-51, 450, 452, 454 

Burnet, Thomas, 303 

Bury, Mrs., 99-100, 365 

Bury-Fair, 380-82, 402 

Busy-Body, The, 134, 135-36 


“Calista,” 386 (Mrs. Cockburn) 

Campbell, Thomas, 423 

Cannon, Mary Agnes, 9 

Carew, Lady Elizabeth, 326 

Carey, Lady Elizabeth (Spencer), 29 

Carey, Lady Elizabeth (Tanfield), 33, 
34 

Carey, Lady Letice, 34 

Carlisle, Anne, 84 

Caroline, Queen, 184 

Carter, Elizabeth, 77, 243, 245, 255- 
57, 352, 440, 445, 451, 452 


INDEX 


Carter, Thomas, 35, 41 

Castara, 24 

Castiglione, Baldasar, 18, 426 

““Catchat,” 383 

Catherine, Queen, 6, 7, 426 

Cato, 199, 437 

Cellier, Mrs. Elizabeth, 90-91, 434 

Centlivre, Mrs. Susanna, 132, 1383-37, 
389-91, 436, 450 

Centlivre, Mrs., German Studies of her 
Plays, 137 

Century of Distichs, 13 

Chalmers, Alexander, 12, 422, 423 

Chambers, Mary C. E., 38 

Chandler, Mary, 251 

Chapone, Mrs., 182-85 

Characters, 23 

Charity Schools, 268-71 

Charles I, 84, 427 

Chidley, Katherine, 36-37 

Child and His Book, The, 89 

Children’s Books, 89, 233 

Choice Manuall, A, 31 

Christmas Box, A, 233, 435 

Christopherson, Dr., 11 

Chudleigh, Lady, 147-50 

Cibber, Colley, 135, 229, 395-98 

Cibber, Mrs. Susanna, 83 

Cibber, Theophilus, 84, 128, 129, 146, 
155, 208, 212, 251, 366, 393, 422 

Circulating Libraries, 414-15 

City Match, The, 375 

City of Learned Women, A, 4 

Claire, Countess Dowager of, 26 

Clarissa Harlowe, 337-38, 450 

“Clinket, Phoebe,”’ 349, 393-95 

Cockburn, Mrs. Catherine, 104-11, 
245, 248, 352, 386, 437, 440, 443 

Coke, Daughters of Sir Anthony, 12, 
13, 27, 326 

Cole, Dr., 11 

Coleman, Mrs., 81 

Collet, Mary, 40, 42 

Collier, Jeremy, 118, 130, 152, 444 

Collier, Margaret, 341-42 

Collyer, Mrs. Mary Mitchell, 131, 
231-35, 425, 431, 435, 437, 445 

Collyer, Mrs. Mary Mitchell: A Ro- 
manticist of the Mid-Century, 234-35 

Colman, George, 413-18 

Colville, Lady Elizabeth, 20 

Comparison between the Two Stages, 82, 
388-89 

Confessio Amantis, 3 


INDEX 


Congreve, William, 121, 384-86, 444 

Conjugal Duty, 147-49 

Conscious Lovers, The, 137, 234 

Conway, Lady, 112-14, 443 

Cook’s New Year's Gift, The, 91 

Cooper, Mrs. Elizabeth, 187-93, 421, 
425, 426 

Cortegiano, Il, 18 

Cotterell, Sir Charles, 55, 58, 59 

Countess of Lincoln’s Nurserie, The, 
30, 31 

Countess of Montgomerie’s Urania, 
The, 29 

Court Poems, 199 

Coventry, Francis, 125, 126 

Cowley, Hannah, 137 

Creed, Elizabeth, 88 

Cudworth, Damaris, 450. See Masham, 


Mrs. 

Cumberland, Margaret, Countess of, 
$1 

Cursor Mundi, 2 

Curtis, Sarah, 87 ; 

Cyclopedia of Education, 37, 42, 44, 
276 


Dancy, Elizabeth, 11 

D’Anvers, Mrs. Alicia, 145-46 

Danvers, Elizabeth, 20 

Davenport, Cyril, 42 

David Simple, 235-37, 239 

Davies, Lady Eleanor, 37 

Davies, Sir John, 277 

Davyys, Mrs. Mary, 231 

Debate in the House of Lords, 202-04 

Defence of the Doctrine of Resurrection 
of Body, 109 

Defoe, Daniel, 303, 311-13, 444, 450 

Delany, Dr., 219, 221, 226, 252, 253 

Delany, Mrs., 87, 183-85, 203, 251-54, 
262, 361, 362, 423, 425 

Demoiselles a la Mode, 377 

Denton, Nancy, 24, 25 

De Quincey, Thomas, 346 

Devil is an Ass, The, 375 

Dialogue concerning Women, A, 322- 
23 


Diary. See Evelyn, John 

Diary. See Godolphin, Mrs. 
Diary. See Oldys, William 
Diary. See Pepys, Samuel 

Diary. See Thoresby, Ralph 
Diary. See Warwick, Countess of 
Dictionary of Painters, 84 


481 


Discourse concerning the Love of God, 
101 

Discourse of the Nature, Offices, and 
Measures of Friendship, 56 

Distressed Mother, The, 338, 437 

Divine and Moral Songs for Children, 
89, 435 

Double Dealer, The, 384-86 

Drummond, Robert B., 12 

Dryden, John, 106, 129, 140, 144, 179, 
211, 366, 377, 437, 444, 451 

Duncomb, John, 352-54, 453 

Dunton, John, Life and Errors of, 103 

Dyce, Alexander, 19, 21, 37, 423, 424 


Early Metrical Tales, 21 

Kckenstein, Lina, 1 

Education of a Daughter, Instructions 
for the, 266, 291 

Education of Girls, Higher, 271-315 

L’Egalité des Hommes et des Femmes, 
27 


Eleanora’s Adventures, 204 

Eliza’s Babes, 127 

Elizabeth, Queen, 19, 23, 27, 53, 426, 
427 

Elogium Heroinum, 26, 274 

Elstob, Elizabeth, 169-85, 246, 304, 
305, 353, 363, 425, 439, 445, 451, 
452 

Elstob, William, 171, 172, 173, 176, 
179, 181, 451 

Eminent Englishwomen, Memoirs of, 


Eminent Persons, Letters of, 171, 357, 
361 

Enchiridion, 197 

English Gentleman, The, 24 

English Historical Review, 1 

English Poets, 423 

Entertaining Novels, 161, 162 

“‘Ephelia,” 138, 139. See Philips, Joan 

Epicene, 374 

Epictetus, 197, 256, 452 

Erasmus, 6, 7, 8, 11, 12, 14, 17, 275, 
426 

Essay in Defence of the Female Sez, 
305-11 

Essay on Nature and Obligations of 
Virtue, 109 

Essay on Projects, 303, 311-13 

Essay on Samplers, 260 

Essay to Revive Antient Education of 
Gentlewomen, 280-86 


482 


Etherege, George, 130, 376, 444 
Evelyn, John, 19, 44, 52, 77, 80, 87, 
141, 278, 303, 421, 440, 450, 451 

Evelyn, Mary, 87, 141-43 

Evelyn, Mrs., 51, 141-43, 440 

Evesham, History of, 181 

Experiences of God's Gracious Dealing, 
95 

External Nature in English Poetry be- 
tween Pope and Wordsworth, 369 


Fage, Mary, 36 

Fair Counsellor, The, 149 

False Delicacy, 137 

Fame’s Roule, 36 

Familiar Letters between Characters of 
David Simple, 236 

Familiar Letters and Poems, 249 

Fanshawe, Lady, 45, 74-76, 80, 428, 
432, 439 

“Fantast, Lady,”’ 380-82 

“Fantast, Mrs.,’’ 380-82 

Farquhar, George, 106, 389 

Fatal Friendship, 105, 106, 437 

Felicia to Charlotte, 234 

Fell, Mrs. Margaret, 111-12, 113 

Fells of Swarthmore Hall, The, 111 

Female Biography, 368, 423 

Female Poems, 138 

Female Poets, 127 

Female Spectator, The, 216 

Female Vertuosos, The, 382-84, 402 

Female Wits, 132 

Feminead, 352-54, 453 

Feminine Influence on Poets, 29 

Femmes poétes, Les, au XV Ie siécle, 28 

Femmes Savantes, Les, 376, 377, 378, 
380, 395 

Fénelon, Frangois de Salignac, 266, 
291 

Fenn, Mr., 108 

Ferrar, Miss, 352 

Ferrar, Nicholas, 40, 41 

Feugére, Leon, 28 

Field, Mrs., 89 

Fielding, Henry, 201, 235, 236, 342-43, 
452 

Fielding, Sarah, 89, 233, 235-37, 245, 
437, 447 

Fielding, Miss Sarah, als Roman- 
schriftstellerin, 239 

‘Fiennes, Celia, 165-69, 432, 441 

Finch, Anne, 112-14. See Conway, 
Lady 


INDEX 


Floris and Blanchefleur, 3 

Fordyce, Dr. James, 429 

Fortnightly Review, 1 

Fortunate Parish Girl, The, 204 

Fountain of Gardens, A, 114 

Four hundred new sorts of Birds, 260 

Fox, George, 112 

Foxcroft, H. C., 351 

French Romances, 195, 400-04, 410, 
412, 413 

“Froth, Lady,” 384-86 


“Galesia,”’ 163. See Barker, Jane 

Galindo, Beatrix, 6 

Gay, John, 174, 199, 393 

General Biographical Dictionary, 12. 
422, 423 

Generous Husband, The, 391-93 

Genest, John, 77, 83, 132, 188, 241 

Gentleman Instructed, Supplement to 
The, 333-36 

Gentleman’s Magazine, The, 123, 187, 
189, 240, 241, 246 

George Barnwell, 205 

Gerbier, Balthaser, 44 

Gerbier, Charles, 26-27, 274, 452 

German Literature in England before 
1790, 232 

Gesner, Solomon, Influence of, upon: 
English Literature, 232 

Gethin, Lady Grace, 102-03 

Gibbon, Hester, 269 

Gibson, Susan Penelope, 87 

Giffard, Lady Martha, 59, 61, 64, 155- 


56 

Gildon, -Charles, 82-83, 323-24, 388- 
89, 421 

Gildon’s Letters, 323-24 

Glasse, Mrs. Hannah, 92, 434 

Godfrey, Elizabeth, 34, 40, 68, 89 

Godolphin, Mrs. Margaret, 76-81 

Goody Two Shoes, 89 

Gorges House, 258 

Gosse, Edmund, 57, 213 

Gossip in a Library, 213 

Gournay, Marie de Jars de, 27, 290, 
323 

Grandison, Sir Charles, 354 

Gray, Thomas, 167 

Greatrakes, Valentine, 113 

Grey, Elizabeth, Countess of Kent, 31 

Grey, Lady Jane, 14-16, 20, 27, 326 

Grierson, Mrs. Constantia, 218, 221, 
222-95, 226 


INDEX 


Grinzeus, Symon, 9 
Guardian, The, 329-30 
Guy of Warwick, 2 


Habington, William, 24 
Habbo Mierasess 4 
of, 319-22, 324 

Halkett, Lady Anne, 93-95, 443, 444 
Hand-work, 254, 260-64 
Haney, J. 1, 232 

Harcourt, Miss Harriot Eusebia,” 
aa 


Harley, Lady Brilliana, 31 
Hastings, Lady Elizabeth, 120-24, 174, 


Hayward, Thomas, 190, 421 
Mrs. Eliza, 124, 

230, 424, 431, 437, 453 
Hearne’s Collections, 177, 180, 181 


212-18, 


Hickes, Dr. George, 67, 120, 126, 170, 
172, 174, 177, 266, 270, 290-96, 
297, 303, 448, 452 


ESE. 
Hill, Georgiana, 26, 45, 52, 111 
= of Jemmy and Jenny Jessamy, 


History of Miss Betsy Thoughiless, 213, 


Hazarth, William, 269 

Holdsworth, Dr. Winch, 109 

Home Life under the Stuarts, 34, 89 

Homily on the Birthday of St. Gregory, 
172-76 

Honey on the Rod, 127 

— Mrs. Susanna, 100, 291, 443, 


dortensia,” 387-88 
noe Deliciarum, 1 
Hroswitha, 1 
Hudibras, 104 
Hudson, Lady Anne, 26, 274 
Hughes, Helen Sard, 231, 233, 234 
Hume, Alexander, 20 


483 


Hume, Anna, 35, 451 

H a Lady, and Her Friends, 

Huntington, Lady Selina, 124-97, 444 

Hutcheson, Archibald, 269 

Hutchinson, Lucy, and the Duchess of 
Newcasile, 74 

Hutchinson, Mrs., 45, 69-74, 80, 428, 
432, 439, 450 

Hutchinson, Memoirs of Colonel, 69, 
70, 71, 72, 73 

Hyrde, Richard, 7, 8, 426 


Idler, The, 267 

Illustrations of Literary History, 178, 
179, 180, 181 

Illustrious Persons of Great Britain, 421 

Inchbald, Mrs., 136 

Inconstani, The, 389 

Ingenti Muliebris, De, 273 

Institutione Femine Christianne, 7 

Isabella, Queen, 6 


Jacob, Giles, 191, 421 

James I, 14 

James, Mrs. Eleanor, 103 

Janeway, James, 89 

Jocelyn, Elizabeth, 29-30, 95, 450 

John Inglesant, 41, 113 

Johnson, Charles, 391-93 

Johnson, Samuel, 123, 239, 240, 241, 
242, 261, 336 

Johnstone, Grace, 68, 69 

Jones, Mary, 247-48 

Jonson, Ben, 29, 129, 374, 375 

Juncker, Christian, 421 

Justification of the Independent 
Churches of Christ, 36 

Juvenal, 314, 374 


Katherine, Queene, Parre’s lamenta- 
tion of a sinner, 14 

Kavanagh, Julia, 130, 424 

Keats, John, 56, 57 

Kello, Esther, 35 

Kemys, Mary and Anne, 269 

Ken, Bishop, 269 

Kennedy, Lady Margaret, 350-51 

Kidder, Edward, 263 

Killigrew, Anne, 85-86, 139-41, 150, 
297, 426. 439, 444, 451 

Killigrew, Mrs. Katherine, 13 

Kingsmill, Anne, 150, 297, 439, 444. 
See Winchilsea, Lady 


484 


Knight, Mrs. Helen C., 125 
“Knowell, Lady,” 378-79 


Labadie, Jean de, 273 

Ladies’ Calling, The, 52, 316-19, 320, 
826, 402 

Ladies’ Defence, The, 147-50 

Ladies’ Diary, The, 327-29 

Ladies’ Dictionary, The, 324-27 

Ladies, Fables for, 336-37 

Ladies, Italian learned, 249-50 

Ladies’ Library, The, 119, 330-33, 366 

Ladies of Great Britain, Memoirs of 
Several (Amory), 367-71 

Ladies of Great Britain, Memoirs of 
Several (Ballard), 5, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 
14, 16, 18, 31, 35, 100, 119, 252, 276, 
352, 353, 354-65, 366 

Ladies’ Museum, The, 242 

Ladies, On the Education of, 344-45 

Ladies, Poems by Eminent, 224, 246, 
249, 352, 365-66 

Ladies, Sir Isaac Newton’s Philosophy 
explained for, 256 

Lady, Advice to a, 336 

Lady, Letter to a Very Young, 345-46, 
347 

Lady, The, 2, 4 

Lady's Drawing-Room, The, 410-11 

Lady's Magazine, The, 102 

Lady’s New Year's Gift, or Advice to a 
Daughter, 319-22, 324, 326 

Lady Vane’s Memoirs, 204 

“Leetitia,” 196 

Lagno, Isadore del, 4 

Law, William, 123, 269 

Lead, Mrs. Jane, 114-15 

Leading Women of the Restoration, 68, 
69 


Leapor, Mary, 246-47, 352, 430 

Learned Maid, or Whether a Maid may 
be a Scholar, 273 

“Learned,” The Term, 424-26 

Lebrixa, Francisca de, 6. 

Lee, Francis, 114 

Legacy of a Dying Mother, 95 

Leland, John, 11 

Lennox, Mrs. Charlotte, 135, 195, 239- 
43, 246, 411-12, 413, 437 

Letter touching a College of Mvids, 273 

Letters concerning the Love of Cd, 101, 
297 

Levellers, The, 259 

Lilliputian Magazine, The, 233 


INDEX 


Lioba, St., 1 

Lionel and Clarissa, 398-99 

Literary Anecdotes of the Eighteenth 
Century, 103, 170, 171, 172, 178, 
180, 246, 251 

Little Catechism with Little Verses, 89, 
435 

Tittle Female Academy, 233, 237-38, 
435, 447 

Little Gidding, 40-42, 44, 270 

Little Pretty Pocket-Book, 233, 435 

Lives of the English Poets (Winstan- 
ley), 190, 421 

Lives of the Poets (Cibber), 84, 128, 
129, 146, 155, 208, 212, 251, 366, 
421, 453 

Locke, John, 100, 101, 102, 107, 109, 
338, 343, 452 

London, Bishop of, 26 

Looking-Glass for Children, 89 

Lost Lover, The, 208 

Lounsbury, Thomas, 192 

Love in Excess, 366 

Love’s Labour ’s Lost, 37 

““Lovewit, Mrs.,”’ 383 

Lowndes, W. T., 189 

Lucar, Elizabeth, 16, 430 

Lumley, Lady Joanna, 14 

“Lydia Languish,” 418-19, 446 

Lynacre, Dr., 6 

Lyttleton, Lord, 336 

Luther, Martin, 25 


Macaulay, Catherine, 429, 430 

Macaulay, T. B., 142, 431 

Madan, Mrs., 248-49 

Major, Elizabeth, 127 

Makin, Mrs., 44, 341, 426, 441, 448 

Malcolm, James P., 267 

Manley, Mrs. de la Riviére, 106, 119, 
132, 151, 208-11, 230, 304, 424, 431, 
437, 453 

Manly, Mrs. Arabella, 260 

Manners and Customs in London in 
the Eighteenth Century, 267 

Manning, Anne, 9 

*Marilla,” 410-11, 418 

“Marinda,” 155. See Monck, The 
Hon. Mrs. 

Marinelli, Lucrecia, 27, 53, 323 

“Marissa,” 149. See Lady Chudleigh 

Marriage 4 la Mode, 377 

‘*Marsilia’”’ [Mrs. Manley], 387 

Mary, Princess, 6, 8, 11, 14, 17 


INDEX 


Mary Salome, Mother, 38 

Masham, Lady Damaris, 100-02, 443, 
444, 452 

Mason, Mr., 89, 435 

Masters, Mary, 249-50 

Mayne, Jasper, 375 

Mcllquham, Miss, 315 

““Meanwell, Lady,” 383-84 

“Melantha,” 378 

Melville, Elizabeth, 20 

Mendoza, Dojia Maria Pacheco, 6 

Method of Devotion, 98 

Midsummer Night's Dream, A, 38 

Midwives’ Book, The, 90 

Miles, Dudley, 376 

“Millamant,” 377 

Millennium Hall, 271 

Milton, John, 25 

“Miss” and “‘ Mrs.,” 76-77 

Mock Astrologer, The, 377 

Modern Language Notes, 27 

Moliére, J. B. P., 368, 375, 376, 396, 
400, 402, 403 

Moliére, Influence of, on Restoration 
Comedy, 376 

Monck, The Hon. Mrs., 155 

Monk, Mrs., 412-13 

Monroe, Paul, 37, 42, 44, 276 

Montagu, Mrs. Elizabeth, 263 

Montagu, Lady Mary, and her Times, 
194, 196, 199 

Montagu, Lady Mary Wortley, 66, 
193-208, 262, 305, 315, 336, 341, 
849, 424, 439, 440, 441, 450, 454 

Montagu, Mr. Wortley, 196, 198, 199 

Moore, Edward, 336-37 

More, Cresacre, 9, 10, 11 

More, Henry, 113 

More, Henry, The Life of, 114 

More, Sir Thomas, 6, 9, 10, 11, 12, 45 

More, The Household of Sir Thomas, 9 

Mores, Edward Rowe, 172, 177 

Morgan, Charlotte E., 231 

Morwen, Dr. John, 11 

Mother's Legacie to her Unborne 
Childe, The, 29 

Mother’s Will to an Unborn Child, The, 
95 

Mozans, H. J., 1, 4, 6 

Mulcaster, Richard, 17, 426 

Muses’ Library, The, 189-93, 421 


Naish Court, 270 
Nelson, Robert, 303 


485 


New Atalantis, The, 119, 151, 209, 210 

Newbery, John, 89, 435 

Newcastle, Duchess of, 45, 46-54, 127- 
28, 141, 326, 393, 425, 428, 430, 434, 
439, 451 

Newcome, Mrs., 104 

New English Drama, 136 

Nov General Biographical Dictionary, 

, 3868 

New Help to Discourse, 25 

New Shakspere Society Series, 24 

Nichols, John, 103, 104, 170, 171, 172, 
178, 179, 180, 181, 183, 187, 193, 
243, 246, 251 

Nine Muses; or Poems on the Death of 
John Dryden, 106 

Norris, John, 100, 101, 107, 297, 452 

North, The Hon. Miss Dudleya, 143, 
365, 450, 451 

North, Mary, 59-61, 428, 450 

North, Roger, 60, 440 

Norths, The Lives of the, 60, 440 

Notabilita e della eccellenza delle donne 
e difetti degli uomini, 27 

Notes and Queries, 21, 25, 26, 29, 43, 
44, 77, 89, 93, 119, 162, 188 

Numismata, 20, 141, 364 


Occasional Thoughts, 101, 102 

Ogilvius, Johannes, 179 

Old English Scholarship in England 
from 1566 to 1800, 176 

“Oldwit, Gertrude,” 380-82 

Oldys, William, 85, 189-90 

Opdyke, L. E., 18 

Orations of Divers Sorts, 50 

“Orinda,” 53, 54-59, 63, 64, 139, 141, 
154, 160, 162, 257, 433, 438, 444, 
451. See Mrs. Katherine Philips 

Oroonoko, 130-31 

Osborne, Dorothy, 51, 58, 61-66, 80, 155, 
156, 157, 400-01, 428, 432, 440 

Osborne, Mrs. Sarah, 62, 156-57 

Overbury, Sir Thomas, 23 

Overing, Mrs., 259 


Pakington, Lady, 66-67, 80, 316, 317, 
365, 428, 433, 443, 444, 450 

“Pamela,” 338 

Paper-cutting, 261, 271-72 

Paradise Lost, 25 

Parker, Chief Justice, 178 

Parr, Queen Catherine, 8, 14 

Partonope of Blois, 3 


486 


Patch-work Screen, A, 161, 162, 262 

Patroness, The, 22, 28, 432-33 

Pearl, A Chain of, 35-36 

* “Peggy’s” Accounts, 43 

Pell, John, 277 

Pembroke, Countess of, 21, 22, 23, 27, 
28, 29, 326, 364 

Pen, Miss Margaret, 86, 87 

Pendarves, Mrs. (See Delany, Mrs.) 

Pennant, Thomas, 32, 33 

Pepys, Mrs., 86, 87 

Pepys, Samuel, 128, 377, 401 

Percy Society Publications, 68 

Peregrine Pickle, 204 

Perwick, Mrs., 42 

Peveril of the Peak, 51 

Philips, Constantia, 205, 246 

Philips, Joan, 138-39 

Philips, Mrs. Katherine, 42, 54-59, 
141, 160, 230, 248, 326. See ‘‘Or- 
inda” 

Phillips, Ambrose, 338, 437 

Phillips, Edward, 190, 191, 421 

Phillips, John, 20 

*Philomela,” 157, 158, 160. See Rowe, 
Mr. 


iS? 

Philosophical and Physical Opinions, 
46, 47, 48, 49, 50 

Pious Englishwomen in the Seventeenth 
Century, 92 

Pix, Mrs., 132-33 

Pliigge, Georg, 239 

Poetical Recreations, 161 

Poetical Register, The, 191, 421 

Polite Conversation, 52, 222 

Political and Social Letters of a Lady of 
Quality, 156-57 

Polly Honeycomb, 204, 213, 214, 413- 
18, 446 

Pompey the Little, 126, 204 

Pope, Alexander, 109, 130, 136, 174, 
199, 201, 202, 211, 215, 218, 219, 
226, 235, 245, 248, 261, 348-50, 353, 
366, 393, 444 

Pope, Emma Field, 2 

Portland, Duchess of, 184-85 

Positions, 17 

Powell, Thomas, 23 

Power of Love, The, 209 

Précieuses, Les, 375, 376, 380, 400 

Priests, Josias, 259 

Primrose, Lady Diana, 36 

Princess, The, 370, 430 

Protestant Nunnery, A, 270 


INDEX 


Prude, John, 144 

Pseudonyms or Initials 
“A.C.” [Lady Cokaine?] 
“A. M.,” Mrs 


“ Ardelia ” [Lady Winchilsea] 
“ Astrea” [Mrs. Behn 
“Corinna” [Mrs. Elizabeth Thomas] 
“Ephelia”’ [Joan Philips] 
“Galesia” [Jane Barker] 
“Leetitia” [Lady Mary Wortley 
Montagu] 
“Marinda”’ [The Hon. Mrs. Monck] 
“Marissa” [Lady Chudleigh] 
“Orinda” [Mrs. Katherine Philips] 
“Philomela” [Mrs. Elizabeth Rowe] 
“Stella’’ [Hester Johnson] 
Putnam, Emily James, 2, 4 
Puttenham, George, 18 
Pylades and Corinna, 212 


Queen-like Closet, The, 91 
Quixote, The Benevolent, 241 
Quixote, The Female, 195, 240-41, 411- 


12 
Quixote, The Spiritual, 241 


Radegunde, St., 1 

Rainbow, Bishop, 31, 32 

Ratione Studii, De, 7 

Reading Lists: Vives and Hyrde, 8; 
Mr. Bellamy’s list, 266-67; Dr. 
Hickes’s list, 294-95; list in Essay in 
Defence of Female Sex,307-08; Steele: 
Ladies’ Library, 330-33; Leonora’s 
Library, 330; Polly Honeycomb’s 
novels, 414-17; Lydia Languish’s 
novels, 418-19 

Reasons Humbly Presented, 103 

Reed, Bertha, 232, 233 

Reflections on Ancient and Modern 
Learning, 22 

Reflections on Marriage, 298, 300 

Refusal, The, 395-98, 399 

Restitution of Prophecy, The, 37 

Reynolds, Myra, 150, 151, 369, 393 

Richardson, Samuel, 235, 238, 245, 
337-42, 354, 444, 450, 452 

Riches, Catherine. See Mrs. Bovey 

Richmond, Countess of, 5 

Rise of the Novel of Manners, 231 

Rivals, The, 418-19 

Rival Widows, 188-89 

Roger de Coverley, Sir, 119 

Romantic Novel, An Early, 231 


INDEX 


Romantick Lady, On a, 412-18 

Roper, Margaret, 7, 8, 9-11, 362, 430 

Rose, G. H., 368 

Rowe, Mrs. Elizabeth, 87, 157-60, 
251, 262, 263, 352, 440 

Royal Hospital, Scheme for Founda- 


351, 444 


Salmon, Mrs., 42, 54 

Salomon, Les Proverbes de, 35 

Savage, Richard, 201 

Sazon Homilarium, 179-81 

Schiff, Mario, 27 

Scholemaster, The, 14 

Schools for Girls before 1660, 37-45 

Schurman, Anna Maria van, 28, 174, 
271-76, 290, 315, 323, 364, 365, 441 

Scott, Mrs. Mary, 351 

Scott, Mrs. Sarah, 270-71 

Scott, Walter, 51 

Scottish Text Society, 21 

Scowrers, The, 263 

Secker, Archbishop, 243, 256, 451, 452 

Secret History of : Zarah, 208 

Select Colloguies, 12 

Serious Proposal to the Ladies, A, 102, 
298, 301, 305, 311 

Sermon on *Alms-giving, A, 290 

Seventeenth Century Studies, 57 

Seward, Mr. Thomas, 181 

Shadwell, Thomas, 129, 130, 380-82, 


402 
Shakespeare Illustrated, 241 
Sharp, Jane, 9C, 434 
Sheridan, R. B., 418-19 
Shirley, John, 421 
Shorthouse, J. Henry, 40, 41, 113 
Siddons, Mrs., 83 
Singer, Elizabeth [See Mrs. Rowe] 
Sir Charles Grandison, 245 
Sir Patient Fancy, 878-79 
Sir Roger de Coverley, 119, 120 
Smith, Florence, 101, 297, 301, 302, 


303 
Social Life in Reign of Queen Anne, 
260 


Social Life under the Stuarts, 40, 68 

Society for Encouragement of Learn- 
ing, 193 

“Society of Friendship,” 57 


487 


Somerset, Daughters of Duke of, 13 
Somerset, Duchess of, 251, 262, 263 
Song of Three Children Paraphrased, 


146 
“Sophia,” 111, 313-15, 341, 442, 448, 
453 


“‘Sophronia,” 395-98 

Southey, Robert, 423 

Specimens of British Poetesses, 19, 423 

Specimens of Later English Poets, 423 

” | Spectator, The, 260, 261, 447 

Spence’s Anecdotes, 196 

Sprint, Mr., 147 

Stage, History of the English, 81 

Stage, Some Account of the English, T7, 
83, 132, 188, 241 

Stainforth, Rev. A. J., 127 

Stanglmaier, Karl, 161 

Steele, Sir Richard, 119, 121, 174, 209— 
11, 304, 330-33, 338, 366, 403-09, 


4i4 

“Stella,” 348, 350, 452 

Strype, John, 37 

Studies in Chaucer, 192 

Sullen Lovers, 380-82 

Swearing in England, 52 

Swift, Jonathan, 52, 174, 178, 218-31 
(passim), 303, 444, 452 

Symonds, Emily, 193, 194, 196, 199 


Table Talk, 25 

Talbot, Catherine, 77, 243-46, 256, 440 

Tatler, The, 121 

Taylor, Jeremy, 56, 451 

Telemachus, 266 

Telford, John, 115 

Temple, Sir William, 61-66 (passim) 

Tender Husband, The, 338, 403-09, 
418-19, 444 

Tennyson, Alfred, 370, 430 

Term Catalogues, 35, 68, 85, 90, 92, 144 

Theatrum Poetarum, 20, 190, 421 

Thomas, Edward, 29 

Thomas, Miss Elizabeth, 211-12 

Thoresby, Ralph, 87, 160, 161, 174, 
179, 197, 268 

Thornton, Mrs. Alice, 44 

Three Hours ajier Marriage, 153, 304, 
393-95 

Through England on a Side Saddle, 
163-69 

Thwaites, Mr., 174 

Tindale, Mr., 181 

Token for Children, 89 


\ 


488 


Tom of All Trades, 23 

Tom Jones, 342-43 

Tour in Scotland, 32, 33 

Tragedy of Mariam, The, 33-34 

Traité de Véducation des filles, 291 

Treatise on Education, 338 

Treatise on the Lord’s Prayer, 7 

Trotter, Catherine, 132. See Mrs. 
Cockburn 

Troy Book, 3 

Truman, Sir George, 417 

Turkish Letters, 207-08 

Tutchin, Mrs. Elizabeth, 259 


Udall, Nicholas, 17, 426 
Upham, A. H., 74, 306 


“Valeria,” 389-91, 450 

Vanbrugh, Sir John, 387-88 

Vazeille, Mrs., 352 

Verney, Molly, 259, 262 

Verney, Sir Ralph, 24, 25, 447 

Victoria History of Yorkshire, 122, 123 

Vindication of the Church of England, 
103 

Vindication of Mr. Locke’s Christian 
Principles, 109 

Virtuous Woman Found, The, 68 

Vives, Juan Luis, 7, 426 

Vives and the Renascence Education of 
Women, 5-10 (passim) 


Walker, Dr., 68, 69 

Walker, Mrs. Elizabeth, 95 

Walker, John, 171 

Walpole, Horace, 84 

Walsh, Marie Donegan, 4 

Walsh, William, 322 

Wanley, Mr., 178 

Ward, Henry, 114 

Ward, Mary, 38-40 

Ward, Mary, A Foundress of the Seven- 
teenth Century, 38 

Ward, Mary, The Life of, 38 

Warwick, Countess of, 68-69, 80, 428 

Warwicke, M., Specialties in the Life 
of, 68 

Watson, Foster, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10 

Watts, Isaac, 89, 435 

Way of the World, The, 444 

Webb, Mrs. Maria, 111, 114 

“Wellfed, Mrs.,” 387 

Wentworth, Lady Arabella, 45 

Wesley, John, 230, 351-52 


INDEX 


Wesley, John, The Life of (Telford), 
115 


Wesley, John, The Life of (Winches- 
ter), 115, 116, 117 

Wesley’s Journal, The Heart of, 230 

Wesley, Mrs. Susannah, 115-17 

“Western, Mrs.,” 342-43, 452 

Westmoreland, Jane, Countess of, 14 

Weston, Jane, 19-20, 23, 53, 326 

Wharton, Mrs., 144, 351 

What Ann Lang ey = 

Wheler, Sir George, 27 

Whicher, G. F., 212, oe 215, 216 

White, Mrs. Elizabeth, 95 

Whitgift, John, 37 

Wife, A, 23 

Wife, The, 217-18 

Wilford, John, 123, 421 

Williams, Jane, 12, 424 

Wills, Henry, 119 

Winchester, C. T., 115 

Winchilsea, Lady, 129, 150-55, 174, 
304, 349, 352, 382, 393-95, 424, 426, 
432, 438, 451, 452 

Winstanley, William, 190, 421 

“W. M.,” 132, 386-87 

Wollstonecraft, Mary, 429, 455 

Woman as Good as the Man, The, 286- 
90 

Woman in Italy, 4 

Woman in Science, 1, 4, 6 

Woman under Monasticism, 1 

Womankind in Western Europe, 4 

Woman's Record, 424 

Women artists, 84-88, 433 

Women book-sellers, 229 

Women, Catalogue of Learned, 421 

Women, Education of, Current opin- 
ion embodied in Comedy, 445-47 

Women, Education of, Opinion of. 
minority on, 448-53 

Women, Education of, in relation to 
the Church, 453-54 

Women, Education of, during the Re- 
nascence, 9 

Women of England, Literary, 12, 424 

Women of Florence, 4 

Women, Illustrious History of, 421 

Women, Learned, and a Public, 430-31 

Women of Letters, English, 130, 424 

Women in Literary Biography, 420-24 

Women in medicine, 433-34 

Women novelists, 437 

Women playwrights, 436-37 


INDEX 489 


Women in practical benevolence, 435 | Wood, Mrs. Hannah, 264-67, 447 
Women printers, 216 Woolley, Mrs. Hannah, 91, 92, 434 
Women in propaganda, 441-42 Wordsworth, William, 40, 168 
Women in religious controversy, 442-| Works of the Learned, 109 

44 Worthies of Yorkshire and Lancashire, 
Women, Religious verse by, 438 32 
Women in science, 434-35 Wotton, William, 22, 23 
Women, Work of, compared with con- | ‘“‘ Wrangle, Lady,” 396-98 

temporary work by men, 444-45 Wright, Thomas, 382-84, 402 
Women writers of autobiography and | Wright, Thomas, 4 


letters, 439-41 Wroth, Lady Mary, 29, 326 
Women writers on practical subjects, ; Wycherley, William, 130, 444 
89-92 
Women’s speaking justified, 112 Young, Arthur, 167 
Wonder, The, 134, 136 Young, Edward, 201 


Wood, Anthony 4, 190 Young, Francis Berkeley, 21, 22 


Che Givergide Press 
: CAMBRIDGE . MASSACHUSI 
U.S.A 


“ 


BLO, ? 
| 


= R464L 
= 370595 
i= 

| : 7 ! 

| = * 

; of Reyno 
iB m 0 
e. ; Irving 

Eng, 219 
oct * ‘54 
: af 


